The Torch of Tangier: A Lily Sampson Mystery

Baron's second story about the young luckless American Archaeologist Lily Sampson has her trapped in Tangiers, unable to return home given the Atlantic dangers of the German submarines. Her work digging up Neanderthal artifacts now halted, she is recruited into the OSS to help with Operation Torch, the code name for the proposed landing of U.S. forces on the Atlantic Coast of Morocco. The allies have succeeded at El Alemien and the British are on the ground in the Western Desert planning to move against Rommel. For the population in Tangiers questions remain. Will Spain maintain her neutrality? Where exactly are the German U-boats? How nationalistic, and thus potentially dangerous, had the Berbers become? Spies also abound, and Baron manages to never let the reader know whom one really can trust. When murders occur, the sense of intrigue and suspicion becomes a murky reality for Lily whose life is at risk. Baron does a solid job describing the Berber population, Moroccan coastline, colorful byways of Tangiers, and Gibraltar with its wartime activities occurring deep within the rock's tunnels. Lily's interest in Morocco's distant past enters the narrative with reference to the world of the Neanderthals, the Romans, Latinized Berbers, and Moslem sultanate established by Moulay Idriss. As Lily muses, while her reality is the past, and her present a "moving pinnacle of time," they were really all of a piece.

Archeologist Dr. Drury entices dissertation candidate Lily Sampson to accompany him to a Tangier excavation of a Neanderthal site in the Cave of Hercules. She has been there for over a year and has seen it turn from an International zone into an area controlled by Spain. At present she cannot work because mud flooded the caves and the Spanish Governor denies the Americans access. Dr. Drury confesses that he is OSS and had asked Lily to join his dig because she has skills that will prove useful to the Allies. Lily agrees to work for the American Legation on a top secret mission Operation Torch, the Ally landing of men to push out the Axis from North Africa. As she begins her assignment her mentor is killed and the key code box missing; Lily realizes that she must find it or Operation Torch will be compromised. This exciting historical thriller gives the reader a first hand seat to the exotic North Africana region during 1942. Readers, like the heroine, are unsure who to trust as an ally today can be tomorrow's enemy. The protagonist is a strong-willed and courageous person who does her part to support the war effort, which means in her case being in danger at all times. Think Casablanca as Aileen G. Baron makes the past come vividly alive so that the audience will believe this is the beginning of a long friendship. Harriet Klausner