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Title: A Time without Shadows

Author: Ted Allbeury

Narrator: Simon Prebble

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-16-14

Publisher: Recorded Books

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

When 1940 brought the invader, it was only a matter of time before Philip Maclean, the Briton, would find his way back to France and the woman he loved. That he should set up a resistance network was a duty, that it would succeed was only to be expected. Then the call came from London, from a source high up in the chain of command, instructing Philip to risk all in a doomed attack on the German invaders as a prelude to an Allied landing. Now, 42 years later, Harry Chapman is detailed by British Intelligence to discover just who gave the order and why.

Members Reviews:

Fiction based on fact

This is a "fictional" story written with passion written about a real incident in World War II. Set in 1943 when the allies had no real forces to threaten the Germans in France but at the same time trying to divert German forces from other areas (especially the Eastern Front) the idea was to persuade the Germans that an actual threat of invasion existed (look up Operation Cockade). All the incidents portrayed in the book actually happened. The Secret Service person involved was Claude Dansey, the Frenchman involved was Henri Dericourt. The SEO agent was betrayed to the Germans by the Secret Service (Dansey) who hoped that the Germans would never believe that a British agent would be betrayed by his own side and so would believe that a real operation was underway to prepare for an invasion of France. This brave SOE agent went to his death in German concentration camps believing that (under severe torture) he had inadvertently betrayed an actual operation. It is also true that at the end of World War II all records concerning the SOE were destroyed so that incidents like that mentioned above would not be exposed.

Solid Espionage Novel

Split between World War II and the late '80s, this semi-thriller begins with the announcement of the death of at least one of its heroes. At the end of a tedious session of Parliament, a relatively obscure member asks a question about a betrayed Special Operations Executive resistance operation in occupied France in 1943. An intelligence officer named Chapman is assigned the task of looking into the matter and the book turns back in time to 1940. There, the reader meets Philip Maclean, a young painter living in France when the Germans invade. He escapes to England, but decides to return as a spy in order to be closer to his love, a stereotypically beautiful girl next door. At the same time, a Frenchman named Masson is also introduced. A combination of con-artist, salesman, and Walter Mitty, he's a slimy character whose priority is looking out for number one. He too escapes to England, and is installed as an important cog in supplying Maclean's network. Allbeury does an excellent job quietly showing how Maclean develops relationships with resistance members in a village an hour outside Paris, and slowly are carefully builds his network. When the network goes active, it's quickly rounded up and Maclean is sent with others to Auschwitz, where he dies, as foreshadowed in the prologue.

Back in the present day, Chapman starts digging into what happened to the old network, and spends time talking to Maclean's widowed love, and various other survivors. As he shuttles around Europe, it quickly becomes clear that Masson is at the center of the mystery of what happened.