The Lost Girls of Paris

I enjoyed reading Pam Jenoff's latest World War II novel, The Lost Girls of Paris (#821).  But I couldn't help but think as I was reading that it all sounded familiar: British women dropped into Nazi-occupied France prior to the Normandy Invasion to sabotage, arm the French Resistance and communicate with London by wireless radios, even down to the "six weeks life expectancy" for the wireless operators.

What makes this book different is the way the story is introduced.  A New York City war widow is late for work one morning and is forced to cut through Grand Central Station due to an accident blocking the streets outside.  Inside, Grace finds an abandoned suitcase under a bench in the terminal.  Does Grace do what most people would do?  Of course not!  She has to open the suitcase and search the contents, ostensibly to find a clue to the owner's identity.  What she finds instead is a packet of twelve photos of young women, some in uniform, each labeled only with a first name.  She puts the suitcase back, but Grace hangs onto the photos.  As she learns later on the news, the suitcase belonged to a British woman who was killed right outside Grand Central Station that morning.  Her efforts to reunite the photos with their rightful owner plunges Grace into a mystery concerning the photos.

The story unfolds between three women; Grace, who found the photos, Eleanor Trigg, the owner of the suitcase, and Marie Roux, one of the girls in the mysterious photos, ping-ponging between post-war New York, London's SOE and its covert missions during the war, and occupied France where Marie has been assigned.

Without giving anything else away, the novel pulls the reader into the story and makes the characters of the three different women compelling, each in her own way.  What did happen to Marie and her companions, and why does Eleanor care so much?  Why does Grace feel it is incumbent on her to complete Eleanor's mission?  You'll just have to read The Lost Girls of Paris to find out!