🖏🖏🖏🖏🖏🖏🖏🖏🖏🖏

And her name is Virginia Hall, and as the titles suggest she was both a badass and little-known. An American born woman of the 1920s, she is already in her 30s by the time she is scouted in France by British intelligence and trained to operate within Nazi-occupied territory. The author, Sonia Purnell, does well to balance setting up the background history and general scene in France at the time (1940-1945) with how Virginia fits within it. As Virginia herself did not want to be well known it apparently was a tough research topic in and of itself, with Sonia having to dig through actual classified documents.

Virginia's actual missions clearly inspired the creation of James Bond, with incredible escapes, personable enemies, and to dissuade this from sounding too romantic, devestating losses. The life and times of Virginia Hall have gone on to be celebrated posthumously by the CIA where she worked after the war, and rightly so! I can’t help but imagine her story fertilizing compelling action within an HBO dramatization.