Peter Fitzsimons: Nancy Wake

By MARGIE THOMSON

From the suburbs of Sydney's North Shore to the buzzing Paris of the 1930s where she lied her way into becoming a glamorous foreign correspondent; to Marseilles during the Second World War where she first married a millionaire and then became a hero of the French Resistance, Nancy Wake's life journey is breathlessly exciting, her sheer Australian cheek easily getting her from one place to the next better one.

The better-than-fiction story is told here in a down-to-earth, relaxed, quintessentially Australian style that at times makes you feel you're simply listening to a jolly good yarn at the pub.

Dubbed "the white mouse" by the Gestapo for her evasion of their traps, Wake had to flee France, parachuting back again under the auspices of the British Special Operations Executive to lead an underground fighting force.

A great story and one we can, at a pinch, share in the glory of, for she was actually a New Zealander, with a part-Maori aunt who provided the financial means for Wake to embark on her longed-for adventures in Europe.

HarperCollins

$34.95