Roger Chandler was young, cheerful, self-assured-an American officer who, like many Americans, believed that black is black and white, white. His assignment was routine enough: to work with the French collaborationist Jean-Louis Mercanton, to live with his family, learn his secrets-and then turn him over to the authorities to be shot. But his job took a terrible and unexpected twist. Mercanton and his family became Roger's friends. They loved and trusted him. They did not realize, and he could not tell them, that he ryas to be the instrument of their destruction, that no matter how sincerely Mercanton tried to undo his past, there was no way out for him. There was no way out for Roger Chandler either, it seemed, caught as he was in a web of conflicting loyalties, but he determined that when the crisis came he would be prepared... . And then he met Danielle, the beautiful, enchanting Danielle. From their first meeting he knew that this would be no casual, tinseled affair, that there would never be anything quite like this for him again. Their love was swift, immediate, devastating --a light flashing through the gathering darkness.... Gordon Merrick understands men and how they react when the cards are down. He draws France with the etched clarity of a Remarque. He knows counter-espionage and writes of it matter-of-factly as a job, not a melodrama - a job in which a man is judged not by what he is but in cold blood by what he has done. His story will give you no rest, even when the last page is turned.
Hardcover - 1947
Used copy in good condition - very fragile edition - book cover has cracks and tears
Donated by Larry Lingle - Lobo Books