Joe Joyce

No Second Take Joe Joyce

A classic French movie is being filmed in wartime Nice
Political tensions are building up beneath the Cote d'Azur's sunny surface
And assassination is in the air on the set
Hollywood veteran Martin Harris is an electrician at La Victorine studio in Nice where celebrated director Marcel Carne is filming one of his classics, Les Visiteurs du Soir.

Harris still enjoys living in Nice in spite of the wartimes tensions. With his own secret past, he remains aloof from them. But his detachment unravels when his girlfriend Solange is falsely accused of having an abortion -- a capital crime in Vichy France.

He seeks the help of a police acquaintance but the tables are quickly turned on him. The secret police want information on communist activities at the studio. And he knows they include a plot to assassinate the German Luftwaffe officer who is having a highly visible affair with France's leading actress.

Caught between protecting his girlfriend and informing on his friends, Harris is forced also to confront the secrets of his own past that led him to France.

For readers of Alan Furst's and Joseph Kanon's World War Two novels