Vichyssoise

Vichyssoise, Olga Swan, Crooked Cat, £7.99 ISBN: 978-1-91138-1174

NO wonder Josef has nightmares; his mother has been dragged off by the Gestapo and he has been left alone at the age of 10 with his little brother and sister.
But that was then and this is today where Josef has built a new life in the US and wants to find the woman who saved them and got them out of Nazi Germany; Karin Schmidt.
Josef calls on his old friend, David Klein a war reporter, for help. David also has a tale – and a reason to find Karin as she also saved him, from Kletschkau prison in Breslau, Germany, in 1938.
As the friends set off, David starts to tell Josef a tale of a trip to France in 1942. He had been asked by British intelligence to find a missing agent.
After being saved from the German jail he was not willing to go to German-held France but he discovered it was to save Karin after she had gone missing while on a mission in Aveyron. Feeling a bit like a ‘Just so’ story, this has an interesting plot but the writing is a little too ‘pat’ to take seriously.