CAST NO SHADOW: The Life of the American Spy Who Changed the Course of World War II
By Mary S. Lovell
Pantheon, 1992
Amy Elizabeth Thorpe pack (1910-63) was a breed apart from the other bored diplomats' wives in the years from the Spanish Civil War through World War II. She became a legend as the spy who helped alter the course of World War II by the most basic of methods. “She singled out top men and seduced them,” writes Mary S. Lovell in “Cast No Shadow.” In Spain or Poland as the American wife of the British diplomat Arthur Pack, or in Washington fleeing her marriage, Pack mixed adventure with distinguished service to the Allied cause. Ms. Lovell, the author of “Straight on Till Morning: The Biography of Beryl Markham” and “The Sound of Wings: The Life of Amelia Earhart,” documents the impact of Pack's act of espionage for British intelligence. Ms. Lovell's fast-paced narrative describes such events as Pack's role in cracking the German Enigma enciphering machine. The author vividly recounts how Pack delivered both the Italian and Vichy naval cipher code books into Allied hands. Ms. Lovell concludes that Pack's life, whatever its flaws, is the story of a woman who did not let down the side.
-- Brooke Kroeger