Tamar: A Novel of Espionage, Passion, and Betrayal is a young-adult novel by Mal Peet, published by Walker Books in 2005. Within a 1995 frame story, where a 15-year-old girl inherits papers and other mementos from her deceased grandfather, it is set in the occupied Netherlands near the end of the Second World War; there it features two British-trained Dutch agents and the resistance to German occupation of the Netherlands. The novel interweaves past and present to show the lasting effects of war and the passions it arouses.
Peet won the annual Carnegie Medal from the British librarians, recognising the year's best children's book published in the U.K. According to WorldCat, it is his work most widely held in participating libraries.
Walker's U.S. division Candlewick Press published the first North American edition in February 2007, entitled Tamar: A Novel of Espionage, Passion, and Betrayal.
Plot summary
1945
Part of the book takes place in 1945 the Netherlands, during the last part of World War II. The story centers on two Dutch men codenamed Tamar and Dart, who are agents of a covert military group called the Special Operations Executive, or SOE. In this point in time the Netherlands is occupied by the Nazis, and the Dutch resistance is "a bloody shambles". Tamar and Dart, his WO (wireless operator), are sent into the Netherlands to organize the different resistance groups into a more cohesive unit. This is Tamar's second time in the Netherlands as an SOE agent, and he is sent to recover his old alias, Christiaan Boogart. When he arrives he reunites with the woman he fell in love with the first time he was in the Netherlands, Marijke. As the novel continues Dart begins to spend more time with Marijke, and begins to fall in love with her, oblivious to the fact that she and Tamar are in love.
After realizing that Tamar and Marijke are involved Dart is described as feeling furious and comes to the conclusion "that it was not her fault. She had been seduced, cynically and deliberately, by the man [Tamar] who should have been protecting her." Slowly he begins to hate and distrust Tamar. Meanwhile, a group of the resistance led by Koop de Vries open fire on a Nazi vehicle. One of the men they shot turns out to be the "head of Nazi internal security in Holland" SS Lieutenant General Hanns Albin Rauter. Rauter is rushed to a hospital and dispatches his deputy to execute the number of Dutch prisoners (known as toteskandidaten, death candidates) as there are bullet holes in his car, 243. When Tamar hears about this, and the executions begin, he tracks down Koop and confronts him, telling him "I know where to find you."
As the story continues, Koop and his group are ambushed by the Nazis at their hideout, and everyone is killed except for Koop, who manages to run. At the asylum where Koop receives medical treatment he reveals to Dart that he believes Dart and Tamar have betrayed the resistance. Dart believes he gains Koop's confidence by telling him "I believe you. I think Tamar betrayed your group." The two create a plan to get rid of Tamar. Their plan goes smoothly, they kill Tamar, but Koop attacks Dart, and is shot by Marjke. When she sees Tamar's body "she [throws] her head back and [begins] to howl like an animal." Eventually Dart convinces Marijke that it is too dangerous to stay in the Netherlands, and the two flee to England.
1995
In the prologue of the novel, before Tamar is born, her grandfather, William Hyde, requests her father Jan to name her Tamar. The novel then fast forwards to when Tamar is fifteen years old in London, in 1995, and lives with her mother after her father, Jan, disappears. Her grandmother, Marijke, is slowly going mentally downhill, and speaks more Dutch than English. Tamar and her mother accompany her grandfather to the assisted living center where her grandmother will be staying. Her grandmother rejects the company of her grandfather and insists on riding only with Tamar: "I'm not going with you! I'm staying with Tamar, here with Tamar." Shortly after her grandmother is sent to the living center, her grandfather commits suicide. Tamar takes his death hard, and waits months to go and visit her grandfather's flat with her mother. Once at the flat, she finds a box lying on her bed labeled Tamar. Inside the box lie many clues leading to her grandfather's past. She takes the box to her distant cousin Yoyo (Johannes van Zant), who decides they should follow the clues and see where they lead.