ASSIGNMENT IN ORAN

In Turner’s World War II-set spy novel, two British intelligence agents travel to Oran to report on a French naval fleet facing annihilation.

In 1940, “France’s dwindling military resources” are a source of perpetual anxiety for the British Empire, especially the naval fleet in the Mediterranean concentrated in the harbors of Mers-el-Kébir and Oran. Germany and Italy, recently joined in a fascist alliance, plan to exploit the vulnerability of the French forces and dominate the Mediterranean and the Strait of Gibraltar. In this taut drama, British Secret Service agents Harry Douglas, a Canadian, and Mick MacLeod, a Scot, are dispatched to Oran to reconnoiter the enemy and compile an inventory of French naval assets, in particular battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. Oran is as dangerous as it is strategically important, a perilous place for operatives. Additionally, Douglas is being pursued by assassins sent by the vengeful Lorenzo Terzo, an Italian businessman who blames him for the death of his father, Rosso, and sister, Gabriella, both killed by a British air raid (Douglas and Gabriella had conducted a torrid romantic affair and were planning to move to Switzerland together). Turner’s command of the most minute historical details is magisterial, and her depiction of the period’s tumult, the “plague that spreads across Europe, the sickness that surrounds them,” is artfully melancholic. But her prose can draw too readily from the stylistic conventions of hardboiled espionage fiction—the sentences are terse and world-weary, as well as laden with cliches. Consider this description of MI6 agent Margaret Gautier: “She doesn’t fight clean. She doesn’t play by the rules. She makes her own rules.” Still, this is a work overflowing with historical savvy and intelligence, enlivened by the fleeting glimmers of hope that sparkle in the darkness of the era. As Gautier movingly puts it: “It’s better to have some kind of faith.”

A suspenseful thriller that radiates historical verisimilitude.