Tangier
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- €8.99
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- €8.99
Publisher Description
A LETTER FROM THE PAST FORCES A DISGRACED BUREAUCRAT TO CONFRONT HIS FUTURE
TANGIER tells two parallel stories: one, a mystery, and the other a spy story set fifty years apart and told in a series of alternating sections. In the first, we follow Christopher Chaffee, a disgraced Washington power broker whose father, a French diplomat, died in a Vichy prison in 1944—or so he had always believed until a letter, received decades after it was posted, upends his life. Soon he is reluctantly inspecting the corkscrew of his own life as he searches the narrow lanes and twisted souls of Tangier's ancient medina in search of the father he never knew.
The second is a tale of espionage and betrayal, set in Morocco during WWII. Rene Laurent, Christopher's father, struggles to maintain his integrity—and his life—in the snake pit of wartime Tangier. The stories slowly intertwine as Christopher unravels the mystery of his father's fate, and Laurent becomes trapped in a web of lies and corruption, and caught up, too, in the arms of a woman he knows he shouldn't trust.
Ultimately, TANGIER is the story of fathers and sons, the alienation of being a stranger in a strange land, the seductive face of betrayal and, finally, the lengths we'll go to for redemption.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Holgate's thoughtful first novel generates suspense by alternating between two related stories. In 1995, 55-year-old Christopher Chaffee, a disgraced U.S. government bureaucrat, travels from Washington, D.C., to Tangier, Morocco, to find out what happened to his father, French diplomat Rene Laurent, whom he never knew. Rene supposedly died in a Vichy prison in 1944, but a letter written by Rene from Tangier in 1940 to Christopher's mother, and finally delivered to her decades later, suggests that he may still be alive. Back in 1940, Rene has sent his wife to safety across the ocean but is unable to escape from Tangier. In trying to find his way in a city rife with spies and wartime intrigue, he takes refuge with Madame Charlotte Wald, a mysterious Frenchwoman whose German last name raises questions. In parallel, Christopher gets little help from Tangier officials and hears confusing stories from people who might have known his father, including former spies. In the end, Christopher not only manages to learn his father's fate but also gains much insight into his own life in an adventure that is truly transformative and convincing.
