The Spytcy Feast for Lawyer

Screenwriter/producer Eden bases his stylish, intriguing first novel on the memoirs of a genuine spy, Englishwoman Valerie Sinclair, who trained for a dangerous WW II mission intended to guarantee the Allies a favorable postwar balance of power. The recently widowed Sinclair takes an administrative job in the British military bureaucracy, where her photographic memory attracts the attention of intelligence officers desperate to learn the status of the Nazis' atomic experiments. They offer her an officer's commission, unprecedented for a woman, and whisk her off for brutal training prior to her dangerous undercover assignment. Informed that a mysterious man in a trenchcoat has been following Sinclair for weeks, her commanding officer, David Hamilton, fears a leak by their partners in the French Resistance; he also worries about the opposition of a British commodore who, furious that a woman has been enlisted in the operation, tries to sway Winston Churchill against it. A barrage of conspiracy theories likely to leave the reader skeptical somewhat mar the set-up for an otherwise strong resolution, but the narrative is generally plausible and engrossing. ( Sept. )