The Obit Man

Sidney Allinson is Canadian news correspondent for Britain’s The Army
Quarterly and Defence. He is the author of The Bantams: The Untold Story
of World War I, Jeremy Kane, and Kruger’s Gold: A Novel of the
Anglo-Boer War.

This is a darned good read (especially for military buffs), a story
within a story about wartime cover-ups.

Jack Devlin is a jaded expatriate Canadian journalist in London in
1986, who writes obituaries for a living and juggles a couple of
girlfriends during his frantic schedule of assignations, deadlines,
research, investigations, and travels. While the eponymous obit man is
researching a piece about a French-Canadian hero who has recently died,
he uncovers a previously untold story about 60 gallant French Canadians
who parachuted into German-occupied France to work with the French
Resistance as saboteurs for Britain’s Special Operations Executive.

Author Fred Langan is the well-known TV host of CBC’s daily Business
News, and was himself a print journalist, which is why he is able to so
authentically convey the ins and outs of earning a precarious living as
a freelancer. But it is his authentic descriptions of guerrilla warfare
by the Resistance fighters that form the most exciting chapters in the
book. Langan is clearly fascinated with the history of World War II,
particularly the exploits of RAF airmen and secret agents. The result is
an entertaining novel that is also a memorial to those now largely
forgotten Canadian secret agents who fought and died in freedom’s
cause during World War II.