By Jane Davis
Special to THE DAILY

“You wore blue; the Nazis wore gray,” reminisces Rick Blaine to Ilsa in the classic film “Casablanca.” They were talking about the day the Nazis invaded Paris and they had to flee as the French army was in retreat and the ragtag flotilla rescued soldiers at Dunkirk.

Francine Mathews sets her tale in the same time, weaving fictional characters with historical in such a way that the reader can’t help but think that perhaps it did happen that way. As a former CIA intelligence analyst, she has especially keen insight into the motives and behaviors .

The Alibi Club is “the” watering hole for those the movers and shakers of pre-war Paris or those who want to be seen as such and for those who simply like “decadent” jazz.

Since the genre is anathema to Hitler, it is even more appealing to many.

The principal entertainer is Memphis Jones (who is modeled on Josephine Baker), a woman who values her own pleasures above nationalities and decides to leave the city as the Aryan horde approaches.

As the story opens, she is miffed that one of her dancers failed to show up and allows a prominent German to soothe her ruffled feelings.

Sally King, an American model who works for Coco Chanel, is on her way to meet her fiancé, an American lawyer who works for Sullivan and Crowell (the firm headed by Allen Dulles that had most of Europe’s major accounts — among them I. G. Farben).

Instead of the romantic rendezvous she expected, she finds a gruesome tableaux with hints of bondage and homoeroticism, in which her fiancé is bound to a bed and the missing dancer is hanging from a light fixture. She knows this is murder but no one wants to believe her — not with the Nazis at the door.

Off she goes to the American embassy, where Ambassador William Bullit, who later served as provisional mayor until formally ceding the city to the Germans, assigns her to the fictional attaché Joseph Hearst.

Hearst listens to her fears and tries to get her and her lover’s body out of the city.

She mentions some documents the dead man had that he had hinted were very troubling and perhaps caused his death.

Meanwhile, Irene and Frederic-Joliet Curie, the Nobel Prize winning scientists, are trying to get their equipment and supplies (think cyclotron, heavy water and uranium) away from the invading army.

A woman from Frederic’s past shows up frantic that her vineyard also will fall to the Germans. He is tempted to forget his work and go with her, but his wife, daughter of Marie, is dying of radium poisoning and he must not let his research fall into enemy hands.

As the cast of real and imaginary characters make their way south toward Marseilles with their myriad schemes, plots and romantic attachments, the reader truly does want the good guys to win and the bad to lose.

It soon becomes clear, however, that not all is black and white and there is more gray than simply the Nazi uniforms.

A gripping story with six pages of information on the historical characters will lead the reader to explore more about them.

Some of the most flamboyant were actual people with even more audacious lives post-war. Allen Dulles, who went on to found the CIA, named the bar near the present-day spy museum the Alibi Club.

Mathews also writes a series with Jane Austen as sleuth using the name Stephanie Barron and tells equally marvelous tales in them. Whatever name she uses, Mathews does a wonderful job.

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