Tamar
Mal Peet
 Part of the book takes place In 1945 Holland, 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 Holland is occupied by the Nazis, and the Dutch resistance is “a bloody shambles”. Tamar and Dart, his WO (wireless operator), are sent into Holland to organize the different resistance groups into a more cohesive unit. This is Tamar’s second time in Holland 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 Holland, 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 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 Holland, and the two flee to England. 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, 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 grandfathers flat with her mother. Once at the flat she finds a box laying on her bed labeled Tamar. Inside the box lay 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. In the middle of the plot, during Tamar and Yoyo’s adventure along the Tamar river they slowly start to fall in love with each other, despite their age differences. As the novel continues Tamar and Yoyo explore the river just as Tamar’s father happens upon them, “And I couldn't look at him, because I was watching the other man’s face and he was watching mine,” and invites them into his home. After settling everyone down Tamar’s father begins to unravel the secret he has kept hidden since the day he left Tamar and her mother. He tells Tamar and Yoyo that her supposed grandfather, William Hyde, is not actually her grandfather. Her real grandfather is Tamar (Christaan Boogart) who was killed in World War II by a man named Koop de Vries, and was led to do so by William Hyde, or Dart as he was known during that time. It takes Tamar awhile to take all this in; “I couldn’t imagine how he could have kept all that stuff dammed up inside him all this time without being at least three parts crazy,” and she even forgives Hyde. In the epilogue she ends up marrying Yoyo.