The Final Act of Daphne Devine (The Great Deception, 3)

Syd Moore
Magpie, 8 October 2027 
Available as: PB, 352pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9780861541645

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of The Final Act of Daphne Devine to consider for review.

The Final Act of Daphne Devine sees our heroine Daphne face her greatest test yet as she struggles against the evils of Nazism in the Second World War.

Readers of the earlier stories will recall how Daphne was recruited in SOE's - the British clandestine warfare organisation formed by Churchill to "set Europe ablaze" and specifically into section W, focussing on deception and especially, on countering the Reich's use of the occult. Or, on manipulating its belief in the occult. Which is what military deception is: the point isn't to make your enemy believe something, but to make them act in certain ways. Whether or not, in Moore's universes, there is any reality to the supernatural, is kept rather mysterious - though you may find an answer in the fact that this is the same world as that of her Essex Witch mysteries.

Anyway. In The Final Act, Daphne has been smuggled into Germany with the aim of placing a certain book - a certain Grimoire - in the hands of a senior Nazi. She's accompanied by Jack, her former lover, which tightens tension as there are things and experiences they're both carefully not going into. As an agent, their lives are in danger, something Moore underlines in an authorial voice hinting at trials to come. One fears for both, and also for those who are - at great risk - helping them on their mission. Moore's at pains both to expose the utter evil of the Nazi regime but also to point up those with courage who simply will not stand for what's being done.

Moore also, in this instalment of the series as in the previous books, takes what I think is a rather brave and unusual approach to constructing her story and narrating Daphne's experiences. We're used, I think, to secret agent derring-do, to stories with a bit of the James Bond pixie dust where the hero (generally a hero not a heroine) is basically freed of constraints (both operational a moral) and cost a swathe of destruction through their enemies. I think perhaps that freedom is what attracts certain readers. But Moore isn't having that. Rather she shows us just how controlled, how restricted, an agent must be on this kind of mission. You're almost without help or support in foreign territory, how are you going to survive other than by sticking to the plan and accessing what aid has been arranged?

And once cut off from that, facing the risk of capture and death, you absolutely are NOT free to fight a war on your own terms - as Daphne discovers.

In these circumstances it's not racing hell that will save you. it's minute observation, understanding those around you, knowing how to take advantage of the smallest opening, the merest hint of a way through. 

It's the ability to carry on with that Great Deception - something daphne's rather good at, as it happens.

And as her fate bears her on, that's exactly what Miss Devine does, making allies where she can, using enemies where she can,  drawing on what she learned in her stage career, what she's learned as part of Section W, leaving her mourning for losses and betrayals till she can conduct it in safety. Facing stomach-churning danger and terrible reverses, Daphne presses on with her mission, then bends her escape plan to serving some further good purposes, carrying news out of Germany about further heinous crimes that aren't yet widely known. It's epic, exciting stuff - because, not in spite of, the fact that Daphne's choices are often terribly limited.

Along the way, Moore shows us plenty of courage and opposition whether in Germany itself, Belgium or France, showing good-hearted people of all sorts simply doing there best - the most any of us can aspire to.

A gripping read, strongly recommended.

For more information about The Final Act of Daphne Devine, see the publisher's website here.