Restless

by William Boyd

What happens to your life when everything you thought you knew about your mother turns out to be an elaborate lie? Ruth Gilmartin discovers the strange and haunting truth about her mother, Sally, during the long hot summer of 1976.
For Sally Gilmartin is really Eva Delectorskaya, a Russian émigré. In 1939 Eva is a beautiful twenty-eight year old living in Paris. As war breaks out, she is recruited for the British Secret Service by Lucas Romer, a mysterious, patrician Englishman. Under his tutelage she learns to become the perfect spy: to be keen, quick, alert, and most importantly to trust no one, not even the people she most loves. Danger is everywhere.
Since then Eva has carefully rebuilt her life and turned herself into Sally Gilmartin. But once a spy, always a spy. Ruth discovers her mother has one final assignment. This time, though, Eva can't do it alone: she needs Ruth's help.
Restless is yet another tour de force from William Boyd. Exploring the devastating consequences of duplicity and betrayal it is a thrilling novel that captures the drama of the Second World War and a remarkable portrait of a female spy. Full of suspense, emotion and history, this is storytelling at its very finest.

(From Publisher)

William Boyd is the author of eight previous novels, many of which have won prizes. A Good Man in Africa won the Whitbread Literary Award for the Best First Novel; An Ice Cream War won the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker prize; Brazzaville Beach won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and The Blue Afternoon was the winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. In addition, some thirteen of his screenplays have been filmed and in 1998 he both wrote and directed the feature film, The Trench.