Spymistress: The True Story of the Greatest Female Secret Agent of World War II

I should have read the reviews on Amazon before I bought this book. If I had, I would have known that, while the subject matter - the life and times of World War II spy Vera Atkins - has tremendous potential, but that William Stevenson jumps around too much, focuses too much time and attention and surface-level details, and ultimately attempts to cover too much ground.

Vera Atkins is the primary focus of the book, of course, primarily in the opening chapters when Stevenson reconstructs her early life as the Jewish, Romanian Vera Maria Rosenberg. In later chapters, it becomes difficult to remember that this is a biography, and not a history of counterintelligence work in England - or of the underground World War II resistance movements in continental Europe.

Compared to other World War II intelligence-focused books (The Irregulars and Operation Mincemeat come to mind, the latter being especially interesting and readable), Spymistress falls disappointingly short of the mark.