Product Description

As World War Two breaks over Europe, Eve Anders is already a veteran from the Spanish Civil War. But now she's called to a very different kind of action: to come home to train for the newly-formed SOE. When Eve left her home town of Portsmouth, she'd never intended to return. Poor housing, poor wages and poor opportunities forced her to make a clean break. But the experience gained as a driver in Spain, desperately fighting for the Republic, enabled her to reinvent herself and to gain a confidence and maturity far beyond her years. She has become her own woman. Which makes her a very attractive prospect in more than one sense to David Hatton, who is charged with selecting highly unusual, independent and intelligent candidates for the Special Operations Executive. This mysterious woman from his past is obviously suitable -- as is her current lover, a captain from the Soviet Secret Service. For in the war that lies ahead, one thing is certain: brute force won't be enough.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1896962 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Review
'Betty Burton constructs the world from the female point of view...carefully considered, subtle and observant' Sunday Times 'She places strong heroines in tough situations and creates gripping tales. She's good.' Bookseller 'The dilemmas [Eve] faces... are still relevant to women today, and she emerges as a typical Betty Burton heroine -- strong, independent' Dorset Evening Echo

About the Author
Betty Burton is the author of many bestselling novels and short stories. She has also written for television and radio, and has won the Chichester Festival Theatre Award. Born in Romsey, Hampshire, she now lives in Southsea.

Excerpted from The Face of Eve by Betty Burton. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
London 1938

The head of SIS, the Secret Intelligence Service, had been given a brief by the Foreign Office. This he passed on for action to a major seconded to SIS from the army.
The brief was this: to create a new arm of SIS – a specialist section to look in to how an enemy might be attacked by unusual means from within its own territory.
On the face of it, it was a straightforward enough assignment. Irregular warfare was nothing new. T.E. Lawrence had already used it against the Turks, and the Boers had used unmilitary tactics against the British in South Africa. The major considered the possibilities: sabotage; inciting labour unrest; use of propaganda; misleading intelligence; use of double agents; women employed as spies and couriers; anything at all that could weaken an enemy. With such breadth and complexity of the work ahead, he felt he might just as well have been given a pin and told to move the pyramids.
Who might be most useful and reliable against a fascist enemy – for it would be fascist? Jews would be; Marxists and Communists; leftist unions; socialists generally; and anarchists, as well as the cleverer sons and daughters of the army and navy.
Who had the creative imagination? Writers of popular fiction; artists; inventors; men who had created business empires from nothing.
Who had the skills to carry out wild schemes? Actors and actresses; people with criminal records for theft or burglary; those with mental agility gained from practising acrostics and logistical puzzles; prostitutes and gigolos; fire raisers and explosives experts; known killers who had escaped the rope with the help of silver-tongued barristers – even the barristers themselves. There were many with skills and knowledge that might be used to subvert the enemy, the Third Reich.
And so The Bureau was formed.
No square-bashing; no big guns; the shiv, the garrotte, hand-gins with silencers would be the preferred weapons of these underground, anonymous recruits.
No Colonel Blimp or Old Bill of the Better Hole.
No notion of rules of engagement.
No notion of fair play.