The Last Goodnight

In The Last Goodnight, the New York Times bestselling author Howard Blum reveals the riveting story of Betty Pack, a dazzling American debutante who became one of World War II’s most successful Allied spies.Time magazine called her “the Mata Hari of Minnesota”; OSS chief general “Wild Bill” Donovan called her “the greatest unsung heroine of the war.” But for decades, the extent of Betty Pack’s achievements as an agent during World War II, first for Britain’s MI6 and then for America’s OSS, remained classified. Now, in The Last Goodnight, the truth about this femme fatale—her dangerous liaisons and death-defying missions, the heartaches that haunted her life, her vital contributions to the Allied victory—forms a narrative more thrilling than fiction.Betty Pack was charming, beautiful, and extremely intelligent: these qualities would prove crucial to her success as a spy. It was a vocation she fell into almost by accident, but she turned out to be a consummate professional. Using the code name “Cynthia,” she seduced diplomats and military attachés across the globe in exchange for crucial secrets, but her missions went far beyond the bedroom. She repeatedly risked her life to secure coveted documents, such as the Polish codebooks that proved key to Alan Turing’s success with Operation Ultra.Blum masterfully spins Betty’s triumphs, the trail of broken hearts she left in her wake, and her brushes with death into a suspenseful saga of wartime espionage. The Last Goodnight is a moving, cinematic biography, distinguished by its nuanced insight, of one of World War II’s lost women—a heroine who deserves to be remembered, not only for what she did, but also for all that she sacrificed.