Orphan Monster Spy by Matt Killeen (review)

It’s 1939, fifteen-year-old Sarah is a Jew in Germany, and she’s all alone since her mother was shot. A couple of chance encounters and reciprocal kindnesses connect her with a cool and well-heeled gentleman who calls himself Herr Haller, who takes Sarah in. Haller—really Jeremy Floyd, a British captain atoning for arms profiteering during the Spanish Civil War—is a spy, and he sees in canny, duplicitous Sarah, who looks like her Aryan father, a chance at getting information about developing Nazi weaponry. To this end Sarah, renamed Ursula Haller and passed off as Herr Haller’s niece, is sent to a high-caste yet horrible boarding school where she’s to befriend Elsa Schäfer, the daughter of a Nazi scientist. The boarding school is torture, sometimes literally, in its own right, so Sarah is thrilled when she finally receives an invitation to the Schäfers’ for Christmas and can do some proper spying—but is she the hunter or the hunted? This is a delectable sprawling action-adventure with generous pulpy touches ranging from the sadistic boarding school to the multifariously nefarious Nazis. At the center is relentless little Sarah, who in her straitened childhood (often depicted in flashback) learned languages and drama from her alcoholic actress mother and gained focus and nimbleness from creative gymnastics practice that was essentially parkour. While she’s a little too gifted at times for plausibility, she’s terrifically appealing in her reliance on being underestimated, her natural stealth, and her implacability. Readers not yet ready for Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds will find this gritty and satisfying, and they’ll be pleased at the hint that Sarah may return for more adventure.