Sonja’s Pick
September 2021
The Spy Wore Red
The Spy Went Dancing
By Aline, Countess of Romanones
I often read The WSJ book reviews and this one about this author intrigued me because they are for the most part biographical with a few additions and subtractions. She was an American beauty, a socialite, who wanted to serve the Allied cause. She turned her life around and became a deep cover OSS agent, a SPY!
In her first novel, The Spy Wore Red, we find a bored beauty who begins rigorous training and infiltrates the highest level of Spanish society. Five years later, she marries a Spanish Count and becomes one of the most watched, admired, fascinating women of international society. She attends lavish dinners and balls as an undercover agent, and one does feel like one is reading someone’s diary. Madrid has many Nazi spies, and she is there to expose them.
I enjoyed the book so much, I turned to her second novel, written in 1990 which takes place in 1964. To succeed she must recruit a trusted friend whose personal loyalty is unquestioned and whose social credentials are unsurpassed and finds that in the Duchess of Windsor. We are taken from the drawing room to real life harrowing encounters in dark alleyways. Intrigue and adventure. What made the book even more fun were the Spanish festivals, the running of the bulls, toreadors and bullfights that we attended with her. Glamorous, romantic and true.