I read this courtesy of my local library. If you do like historical romance, then you’re in for a treat with this. But then, I don’t care for romances and have a very low tolerance level for such devices. And that is my only complaint: the accidental meetings between Marta and Paul were just too numerous to be believable. The mystery was more than decent: although the identity of the mole was not difficult to figure out, the ‘hows’ and ‘whats’ were not so evident–in fact, were a complete surprise.īut, at its heart, The Diplomat’s Wife is a historical romance. I didn’t quite know what to expect from The Diplomat’s Wife, having not read Jenoff before.

Marta goes on a dangerous mission to Poland, where a Communist takeover is imminent and where the seesaw plot takes more than one surprise twist. They marry, and two years later, the English government taps Marta for help in finding a traitor in the British intelligence corps, sending her on an undercover mission. Simon Gold, an English diplomat, needs her language skills, and he wants her as well. Marta is now scared, pregnant, and alone in a strange city. They meet again in Paris and become engaged, only to have Paul die in a plane crash.

A simple gesture of human comfort by a soldier named Paul is etched in her mind, and when she sees him again in a camp for displaced persons in Salzburg, Marta is overjoyed. After working in the Jewish resistance in Kraków, Poland, Marta Nedermann is rescued from a Nazi prison by American soldiers.

The Diplomat's Wife by Pam Jenoff