WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE: WW2's Most Dangerous Spy

A multi-award winning and compelling biography of a masterful spy, and a reminder of what can be done with a few brave people and a little resistance. Reading like a thriller, it is a never-before-told story of Virginia Hall, the American spy who changed the course of World War Two, from the author of Clementine. In 1942, the Gestapo sent out an urgent transmission: 'She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her.' The target in their sights was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore socialite. In September 1941, the young American strode up the steps of a hotel in Lyon, Vichy France. Her papers say she is a journalist. Her wooden leg is disguised by a determined gait and a distracting beauty. She is there to spark the Resistance. By 1942, Virginia Hall had talked her way into Special Operations Executive, the spy organisation dubbed Winston Churchill's 'Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.' She became the first Allied woman deployed behind enemy lines and despite her prosthetic leg helped to light the flame of the French Resistance, revolutionising secret warfare as we know it. By 1942 she was the Gestapo's most urgent target, having infiltrated Vichy command, trained civilians in guerrilla warfare, and sprung secret agents from Nazi prison camps. She established vast spy networks throughout France, called weapons and explosives down from the skies, and became a linchpin for the Resistance. Even as her face covered posters and a bounty was placed on her head, Virginia refused order after order to evacuate. She finally escaped through a death-defying hike over the Pyrenees into Spain, her cover blown. But she plunged back in, adamant that she had more lives to save, and led a victorious guerilla campaign, liberating swathes of France from the Nazis after D-Day. Based on extensive new research, the book for the first time uncovers the full secret life of Virginia Hall and her personal triumph over shocking adversity. Told with a thriller writer style. 399 pages in paperback, photos.