The Ultimate Traitor

The Ultimate Traitor: Based on True Events in WWII Paris

From USA TODAY bestselling author Kathryn Gauci comes an unforgettable and heart-wrenching story inspired by one of France’s worst serial killers – Dr Marcel Petiot.

Paris, 1944: “There had been a heavy snowfall during the night, enveloping Paris in a veil of white. Overnight, the city of light was transformed into a city of darkness. Her warm breath rose in clouds as Madame Josèphe-Rose hurried along the street, avoiding the dark, shadowy figures huddling inside their coats, their faces protected from the cold with hats and scarves. As she entered Place Vendôme, the plaintive music of a lone accordionist expressed the poignancy of Paris under Occupation.”

In a city where the enemy lurks in every doorway, who questions the work of a charming doctor, trusted by all who know him, going about his business in the prestigious 9th arrondissement? But Dr Petiot is using his practice to silently seek out his victims – the vulnerable and desperate who are lured in with the promise of medical help or safe passage over the Pyrenees. Freedom from Nazi oppression is too good to resist.

France, 1942: When the Gestapo executes her father for slipping bread to deportees, seamstress Bernadette Clement flees her village with her young daughter to a Resistance safe house in the elegant Rue de Caumartin in Paris, home of Madame Josèphe-Rose de Banville, whose own brother works for the Gestapo. It is here that Bernadette meets Solange, a young Jewish woman who escaped the Vel d’Hiv roundup and went into hiding.
Then Solange disappears without a trace.

London, 1943: Vera Atkins of SOE’s F Section is sending a new agent, Charlotte Hale, to Paris to find out why Allied agents and civilian escapees keep vanishing. Working undercover as a jeweller’s assistant in Place Vendôme, she traces the disappearances to the same doorway that haunts Bernadette’s dreams. The hunt is on.

Drawing on the true story and using the killer’s actual modus operandi, the author weaves a gripping and heartbreaking tale that you won’t be able to put down.

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