USA TODAY International Edition
‘Saboteur’ reads like fiction with real thrills
Sometimes, the best author is real life.
In these cases, non-fiction tales unfold in ways that even the most imaginative novelist couldn’t dream up — and if he or she did, reviewers would scoff at the unbelievability of the book.
The subtitle of Paul Kix’s The Saboteur: The Aristocrat Who Became France’s Most Daring Anti-Nazi Commando (Harper, 222 pp., ★★★1/2) promises the reader a wild ride that would put Dan Brown, Agatha Christie or Tom Clancy to shame.
Robert de La Rochefoucauld was still in his teens when he decided to follow an exiled Gen. Charles de Gaulle’s call for resistance against the Nazis in 1940. He walked from France — where his family tree reached back to 900 A.D. — to Spain and made his way to England. De Gaulle gave the young man the thumbs-up to join the British, who were training agents from the Continent in special operations.
La Rochefoucauld learned how to help resisters fight back — from how to make and place explosives to how to kill an attacker with one’s bare hands to how to withstand torture.
Kix’s real-life adventure book is informed by interviews with members of his subject’s family, piles of government records and La Rochefoucauld’s autobiography. Kix fastidiously cross references dates and facts to keep the time line uncolored by clan lore and the protagonist’s sometimes fuzzy memory. (La Rochefoucauld’s testimony on behalf of Vichy official Maurice Papon during Papon’s 1997-1998 trial brings controversy to what would otherwise be a black-and-white tale.)
The narrative voice in The Saboteur seems crafted to live up to its pageturner promise. But sometimes Kix is too eager to write like a novelist, resulting in cliches where the true drama could stand on its own.
The ability of Kix, a deputy editor at
ESPN the Magazine, to infuse every chapter with facts and analysis makes the book an enjoyable read.
And the real-life ending seems almost too good to be true. La Rochefoucauld died on May 8, 2012, the 67th anniversary of what he’d risked his life to help bring about: V-E Day.