The Courier

Sprung from a French prison in June 1940, British con man William Quinton reluctantly agrees to transport platinum and rare gold coins for the Banque de France from Paris to Lisbon in his specially built Bentley. Jean Paul Schlesser, bank director, and Max Boni, of the Paris police, provide false passports, money, and gasoline to ease Quinton's passage over roads choked with refugees fleeing the German advance. But Schlesser and Boni are Nazi collaborators; double-cross follows upon double-cross, not the least dismaying those perpetrated by Marie Antoinette de Bergemont, Quinton's lover and fellow passenger. In his third novel, British author Kartun (Beaver to Fox, Flittermouse) pays detailed attention to the Bentley, a cross between James Bond's armored convertible in Goldfinger and the Joad's overburdened flivver in The Grapes of Wrath. This spy chase proceeds at less than breakneck pace, yet for all that it is a satisfying one in which the gold finances de Gaulle, Marie Antoinette discovers she can behave honorably, Schlesser and Boni get their just deserts and, happily, so does the Bentley. December 26