Intrigue in Marrakech!

Night Train to Marrakech (Daughters of War #3) by Dinah Jefferies    

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I tried to read this three times. I just wasn’t in the mood and wasn’t connecting to the beginnings of the story. Who was Vicky Baudin and what was the awkwardness of her relationship with her mother Élise? We do know Élise was with the French Resistance as Vicky’s father Victor, who was executed by the Nazis.  

Fortunately I pushed through my lethargy, started the book again and finished it with the tang of exotic spices and redolent smells of Marrakech in my nostrils, betrayal and violence baying in the background.

What a tale! From Vicky’s journey to Morocco in 1966 to meet her unknown grandmother, her ambitions to become a fashion designer, her meeting with Yves St Laurence that didn’t go according to plan, the witnessing of a murder, the disappearance of her cousin Bea, and the truth after all these years about her grandmother Clemence Petier, and all that happened to her as a child.

At this time Morocco has gained independence from France, corruption is rife, an acquaintance of Vicky’s, an activist friend who’s writing an expose on Mehdi Ben Barka, an opponent of the government who’d disappeared has been murdered, and the French security forces and CIA are keeping tabs on Moroccan agitators. Political powers are circling.

An exciting thriller set against the exoticness of Marrakech and the cooling foothills of the Atlas Mountains where Clemence resides at the Kasbah du Paradis, as the past comes to meet the present.

A Harper 360 ARC via NetGalley.                                              

Many thanks to the author and publisher.