volunteer

This action-packed novel is a warning. Its main character, the young Frenchman Benedict Thurpin – the newly-minted d’Artagnan, daredevil, wit, Breter, warrior, painter, palmist, hunter, gallant gentleman, personification of the spirit of France – like a volunteer fighting Prussians and performing extraordinary feats.

This is the fourth and last of autobiographical novel series by English author E. M. Delafield (1890-1943). It takes the form of a journal of the life of an upper-middle class Englishwoman in the 1930s. The story of a volunteer in a woman’s underground canteen service in England during the World War 2 who must cope with gas masks, evacuated relatives etc.

The story takes place in 1915, WWI has just started, Arsene Lupin returns as war veteran Don Luis Perenna. He is called to uncover the details of the mysterious murder of a Moroccan man, Essares Bey, the disappearance of 300 Million Francs in Gold, and the connection between another war veteran, Captain Patrice Beval and a volunteer nurse working in a military hospital in Paris, affectionately known...