Tightrope, Mawer - B +

                                             In the previous book,'Trapeze', the last sight of Marian Sutro (Alice) was as she was arrested by the Gestapo in the south of France in late 1943. Here, the novel opens up with MI 6 interviewing her in 1994 in Switzerland. Through first-person flashbacks and the interviewer's notes, we learn what happened in Paris, where she was tortured, and in Ravensbruck, where she somehow managed to survive. Struggling to recover and gain her footing in post-war Britain, Marian was brought back into the game by one of her war-time handlers. She was recruited because she was having an affair with a Russian and she played a double agent game for quite some time. After her Russian contact evaded the KGB when they wanted him back in Moscow, she became the Soviet's target. They kidnapped her in an attempt to find him. She then opted to disappear and did so successfully. This one is so good that it makes up for the slow periods of its predecessor.