Tisiphone Walking
This novel (the second in the Ishtar’s Gate series) enters that crowded field of Second World War fiction with a story rooted in captivity, collaboration and the corrosive effects of despair. Set largely within a German POW castle in the war’s closing months, the novel follows Tomasin (Tommie) West, a young British woman held among Allied prisoners and watched over by conflicted German officers. Around her gather a volatile cast: Simon, the earnest airman; George, a poisonous intellectual evangelist for suicide; and Major Brandt, a damaged intelligence officer whose guarded sympathy threatens both their positions. As the war turns against Germany, escape attempts, political intrigue, and emotional entanglements push the prisoners and their captors toward crisis.
As historical fiction, the novel is ambitious and often persuasive. Details of POW routines, Red Cross supplies, escape politics, and the tensions between British and American prisoners feel well observed. The shadow of the “Great Escape” executions hangs convincingly over the camp atmosphere. German intelligence manoeuvring in the final year of the war also lends the book a credible political backdrop, even when the internal debates become somewhat dense. The title’s reference is classical: Tisiphone is one of the three Furies of Greek myth, spirits of vengeance who punish crimes of blood and refers to the novel’s concern with revenge, moral corruption, and psychological disintegration.
The prose is fluent, at times heightened and almost gothic in tone, particularly in passages of emotional extremity. Characterisation is strong, especially in Tommie and the self-destructive George, whose philosophical tirades feel theatrically intense but authentic. Within the broad stream of WWII fiction, the novel stands out for its psychological focus and classical undertones. It is an intense, thoughtful novel, occasionally overwrought, but largely convincing in its historical setting and emotional stakes.
