Nestor Burma has been paid to retrieve a packet of incriminating love letters from the nightclub dancer Jackie Lamour. Mission accomplished, he travels back from Marseilles, in Vichy France, to his home in the occupied zone, but as he leaves the Gare de Lyon, he learns about a murder that could well be related to his recent job. Burma determines to investigate.

Before the war Malet was an anarchist, a surrealist and a poet: a number of his characters are pacifists and former anarchists. There are also criminals, policemen, spies, gestapo, innocent bystanders, journalists who collaborate and journalists who don't.

While I didn't think this was a great book - in 172 pages there were too many characters popping in and out of too many places for too many obscure reasons, which I found quite confusing - the time and the place make it a fascinating read. It is set in France in 1942, and was written in 1946. ( )