Customer Reviews

Sleeping with the Enemy

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This is a good read of the WW II era, about the choices people make during war time and their consequences....However, this book was originally published in 1973 under the title"Stanger at the Gates".

In May 1944, a small French village is getting along peacefully with their Nazi occupiers until an OSS agent parachutes in with an important mission, one that could turn the tide of war. Many of the villagers are collaborators with the Nazis, including the count at the chateau. His wife, Louise, an American, has lost all respect for him because of his weak stance with the Nazis. A German officer is killed in mysterious circumstances and all hell breaks loose, with fearful retributions to the village. In the chateau lives a Nazi officer who is crazy with desire for Louise. All these circumstances create a great story and a suspenseful one. My problem with it is that Ms. Anthony should have had a WWII historian read the book before publication because of wincing factual errors. Or she should have had a better editor. Allan Dulles, the head of OSS in Bern did not know for certain that there were death camps in the Reich until the late fall of 1944. Of course most people knew about the concentration camps, but not extermination camps. Dulles had heard rumors of the death camps from escaping Polish officers, but nothing was confirmed until much later. French villagers in May 1944 certainly would not have known this. Ms. Anthony is a very talented writer and I have enjoyed several of her books, especially The Tamarind Seed. I just wish she had done more research for this one.