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Fictional Account Dances With Mata Hari's Appeal

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By KATHY L. GREENBERG

Published: December 16, 2007

"Signed, Mata Hari," by Yannick Murphy (Little, Brown and Co., $24)

Executed for espionage in 1917, Mata Hari is revived in this sensuous, seductive new novel by award-winning author Yannick Murphy.
Mata Hari was born in the Netherlands as Margaretha Zelle. Long before her infamous career as an exotic dancer, Margaretha stood out for her unusual height and dark beauty.

At 18, she married a Dutch naval officer, who inadvertently sparked her future when he moved the family to Indonesia.

In Java, she learned the dances that brought her international fame. And though her worldly connections perpetuated her celebrity, they also contributed to her downfall.

Murphy's exquisite prose paints a sympathetic but fictional portrait of this enigmatic woman.

The chapters alternate between third-person descriptions of her final days in a French prison and her own voice, in a futile plea for freedom, recollecting the events leading up to her arrest.

There is no question she used her sexuality to her advantage and dallied with cagey military personnel during World War I. Whether she was actually a traitor, however, remains a mystery.

Murphy suggests she was an opportunist but more than likely innocent of the charges against her. Regardless of the truth, the Mata Hari here was a quixotic survivalist whose fiercest loyalty was to herself.

Kathy L. Greenberg of Tampa is a freelance writer.

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