How many times have you heard a great sto­ry and said: ​“You ought to write a book!” Such was the case when Ger­man-born author Clau­dia Stra­chan moved to Eng­land and met Gre­tel Wach­tel, an old­er expa­tri­ate. Wach­tel had plen­ty to tell: first of all, how, as a top-notch trad­er on the black mar­ket, she fun­neled as much food as pos­si­ble to the good priest who was hous­ing Jews on the run; how as a sexy young Ger­man with Social­ist lean­ings and Jew­ish friends, she used her sex­u­al maneu­vers to sab­o­tage every job assigned to her by the Third Reich and mar­ried an over­sexed, albeit masochis­tic, mem­ber of the resis­tance to get out of work­ing for Hitler. Sex was Wachtel’s secret weapon and she uti­lized it with inge­nu­ity and flair, until at last, she found her true love. As limned by writer Clau­dia Stra­chan, the book reads like a nov­el. One reads it for adven­ture, but it is also a most inter­est­ing his­to­ry of what hap­pened in Ger­many dur­ing the Third Reich. Wachtel’s friend­ship with high-rank­ing offi­cers who were anti-Hitler mem­bers of the Wehrt­macht, the failed plot to kill Hitler, the trag­ic British bomb­ing of two ves­sels con­tain­ing Jew­ish camp sur­vivors, and our heroine’s machi­na­tions with the charm­ing Brits of the occu­py­ing force made fas­ci­nat­ing reading.