An Interview with Rhys Bowen By E. B. Davis

Londoner Madeleine Grant is studying at the Sorbonne in Paris when she marries charismatic French journalist Giles Martin. As they raise their son, Olivier, they hold on to a tenuous promise for the future. Until the thunder of war sets off alarms in France.

 

Staying behind to join the resistance, Giles sends Madeleine and Olivier to the relative safety of England, where Madeleine secures a job teaching French at a secondary school. Yet nowhere is safe. After a devastating twist of fate resulting in the loss of her son, Madeleine accepts a request from the ministry to aid in the war effort. Seizing the smallest glimmer of hope of finding Giles alive, she returns to France. If Madeleine can stop just one Nazi, it will be the start of a valiant path of revenge.

 

Though her perseverance, defiance, and heart will be tested beyond imagining, no risk is too great for a brave wife and mother determined to fight and survive against inconceivable odds.

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This is one of Rhys Bowen’s stand-alone novels that I look forward to reading. For those of you who subscribe, it is available through Kindle Unlimited. The Paris Assignment is set in France, England, and Australia during the years of 1931—1946. There are many crimes in this novel only some of which are war related. Others are personal vendettas, and some are crimes through neglect, laziness, or insensitivity—in other words—bureaucracy gone amuck during war.

 

Rhys writes two historical series. She knows the ins and outs of WWI and WWII in detail, which always provides for interesting reading. Please welcome Rhys Bowen back to WWK.    E. B. Davis

 

Madeleine’s mother was French and died a few years after her birth. Her father was English. They lived in England, where Madeleine grew up. Was she always bilingual? Did she want to teach French?

RHYS: Her mother had spoken to her in French but died when Madeleine was ten, so I’d say her French was a little rusty at the beginning of the book. I don’t think her aim was to teach. Just to enjoy life in Paris.

 

Why didn’t Madeleine keep up with her mother’s aunt, Tante Janine?

RHYS: After her mother died and her father married again she was shipped off to boarding school and probably had no way of keeping in touch.

 

When Madeleine became pregnant to Giles, I was surprised how supportive Tante Janine was—so unlike Giles’s mom. Did WWI open the eyes of her generation?

RHYS: I suspect she was very fond of Madeleine’s mother, thus has a soft spot for her daughter. Also, she realizes that she is alone and will need all the help she can get.

 

Giles says to Madeleine, “But one should never be safe and protected….To live with danger is to know that you are fully alive.” Madeleine believes Giles is right. Are they both rash and young? Does she still think so by the end of the book?

RHYS: This statement sums up Giles, doesn’t it? Part of the reason that Madeleine is so attracted to him. She has led a completely safe and boring life and he is showing her what’s possible. Would she have taken the same chances when she looked back over her life? I think she’d have done anything to help her husband and revenge her child.

 

There is a Parisian restaurant with the name Les Deux Magots. I’m hoping that magots in French doesn’t mean the same as maggots in English, does it?

RHYS: It’s a real café, still there. Magot doesn’t mean anything repulsive. It means something like a pile of money or a nest egg! 

 

Giles says that he was promised by his family to another woman, as in an arranged marriage. I knew that during Victorian times that happened, but it still happened then?

RHYS: Among aristocrats, especially in France, marriages were still arranged between families, to make sure the wealth and property were kept in the hands of the family.

Don’t forget Prince Charles’s marriage to Diana was arranged by the family not so long ago.

 

Giles is half Jewish. What was the Kristallnacht?

RHYS:November 1938 the Nazis attacked the Jewish population in various German cities, smashing windows of Jewish businesses, beating up and killing.

 

What was the Maginot Line?

RHYS: It was a supposedly impenetrable line of defense running along the French border with Germany—lots of concrete bunkers, hidden guns etc. They were sure the Germans could never cross. Instead, the German army came from the North through the Belgian forest.

 

Was an Anderson shelter a bomb shelter? Why the name Anderson?

RHYS: I presume Anderson designed it. At the start of the war every family was given corrugated iron and plans to make a shelter in their back garden. You had to dig down several feet, cover the top of the hole with corrugated iron then put the sods of grass on top so that it couldn’t be seen from the air.

 

Madeleine trains as a spy for the British. She goes through extensive training including, Morse Code, radio building and breakdown, sending and receiving signals, physical fitness training, self-defense training, mountain climbing, and skydiving. How long did spy training usually last? Were they really given cyanide capsules to eat if captured?

RHYS: The training was rushed through when the government realized they needed female operatives in France. It would have taken at least a couple of months, maybe longer. The important part was the psychological aspect—making sure you were training someone who would not crack. And yes, the most common cyanide pill container was in the button of a coat. Preferable to betraying colleagues under torture.

 

What is a Meccano set?

RHYS: An early building toy—metal rods that could be joined with nuts to make cranes and cars and buildings. They also came with a motor so that the cars would go.                                                                            

The women who trained for spying with Madeleine were very different from Madeleine, who is an academic. They range from a Moulin Rouge dancer to a debutante. The only thing they shared was a command of the French language. Was this the first time women didn’t experience the segregation of class?

RHYS: I’d say the first world war was the time women did not experience class distinction. Women worked together in the fields, in factories in WWI.

 

What is Printemps?

RHYS: It means springtime in French. It is also a famous department store in Paris: Au Printemps. It’s still there.

 

At the end of the book, you challenge readers to understand what happened at some of the Australian orphan camps, where the children were treated like slaves. What possessed the nuns to act in such an inhumane manner?

RHYS: I have to add that there were also some very kind and loving nuns, I’m sure. But there were enough reports that have just come to light recently of awful abuses to realize it was quite widespread. If you go back far enough imagine all those families in Ireland who had 12 kids. If the girls didn’t marry then the convent was one of the only options for them—thus very unsuitable people became nuns!

 

Did your family immigrate to Australia after the war? Why?

RHYS: My family migration started with me. I was working for the BBC in London when I was lured down to Australia to work for Australian broadcasting. I loved it, sent glowing reports and my brother followed me down to Sydney. Then I met and married my husband and moved to America, but my brother stayed (is still there) and my parents moved to be with him. So my whole family was in Australia until my parents died, and I went to visit every year.