Hello. Does anyone have a list of the best, most immersive fiction (no POV shifts or excessive time jumps or flashbacks) and non-fiction (preferably fiction for more leeway in plot and unexpectedness) WWII escape books that are mature in tone (no vampires, cheesy romance, or self-insert type characters, i.e. no John Wayne escapes camp and woos Nazi officer's wife), historically accurate (but preferably not too indulgent on showing off such fact), and that contain genuine emotion that fits the theme of escaping an occupied country?
I only know of "I am David" by Anne Holm but I'm seeking something more mature and serious and that doesn't shy away from tough subjects. I also have in mind the escape phases (after mission completed or compromised) of Operation Frankton and the covert behind enemy lines actions of the female Special Operations Executive (SOE) agents who parachuted alone into Nazi occupied territory to conduct espionage.
I prefer fiction only for the fact that what may be a relatively ordinary, real-life escape summarized in Wikipedia may be dramatized to heighten tension and the feeling of escape or death. I also have in mind Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk where the Nazis are faceless and not shown to give them more terror in their obscurity. Lastly, I imagine a character/escapee who is truly despised by the enemy or a specific person in the enemy side who truly wants to harm or kill the escapee, i.e. not a high ranking Allied officer who would simply be put in a well accommodating POW camp if captured.
Hi there, if you're looking for fiction then /r/suggestmeabook might be a better choice. Fortunately I can fulfill the non-fiction side of things.
If you're looking for a broad overview of MI9, Britain's wartime agency for escapes and evasion, then Helen Fry's MI9 might suit your tastes. Alternatively, a slightly older book is MRD Foot and JM Langley's MI9: Escape and Evasion 1939-1945. Langley worked with MI9 during the war and MRD Foot was in the SAS so they know what they're talking about, but Helen Fry had access to more archival sources and had the benefit of an extra few decades of research to draw on, so is probably the more accurate and detailed of the two. For a closer look at one of the more daring escape lines, see Reanne Hemingway-Douglass and Don Hemingway-Douglass' The Shelburne Escape Line, which looks at a route which saw escaped prisoners of war picked up by motor torpedo boat from the coast of Brittany.
Paddy Ashdown's A Brilliant Little Operation is probably what you're looking for with regards to the aftermath of Operation Frankton. There is another book on the operation called The Cockleshell Heroes but I haven't read it and as far as I'm aware Ashdown's work is the better regarded of the two.
Most fiction on female SOE agents is bad for multiple reasons, but if you're willing to torture yourself then see Sebastian Faulks' Charlotte Gray (the book won the bad sex in fiction award and the film was described as "frivolous" and "belittling" by a former SOE agent), Pam Jenoff's The Lost Girls of Paris (has time jumps, I'm sorry), or Simon Mawers' The Girl Who Fell From the Sky. For non-fiction see Kate Vigurs' Mission France, which is the best overview of SOE's female agents in general, or Shrabani Basu's The Spy Princess, Sonia Purnell's A Woman of No Importance or Clare Mulley's The Spy who Loved for biographies of single agents (Noor Inayat Khan, Virginia Hall and Christine Granville respectively).
If you want to go straight to the source, the the National Archives has digitised several hundred 'escape reports' - firsthand accounts from downed airmen and escaped prisoners of war who arrived back in Britain. You'll need an account, but you can download reports from the WO208/3324 and WO208/3315 series, and potentially some others but I'm not 100% sure which. These tend to mostly cover the initial actions of the prisoners/airmen before they came into contact with organised escape lines, at which point they end with "from which point my journey was arranged for me", but there's still some close shaves and daring escapes if you go digging.
In terms of memoirs, They Have Their Exits by Airey Neave might be a good shout - Neave successfully escaped from Colditz during the war and achieved the vaunted 'home run', making it all the way back to the UK.
I hope this is enough to be getting on with, let me know if you have any questions!