Red Dancer, Paperback

When Margaretha Zelle, a young woman living in the Hague, answers a lonely-hearts advertisement she becomes draw in into a relationship with a Dutch captain twice her age and leaves with him for a posting in Indonesia. Marred by violence and bitter feuding, their marriage collapses and, on returning to Europe, she adopts the stage name Mata Hari - 'Eye of the Morning' - reinventing herself as an exotic dancer. As the major powers lurch towards conflict, her reputation starts to catch the public imagination from Madrid to Vienna, and she attracts the attention of numerous admirers, many of whom are officers ready to share their secrets with a woman of notorious allure and intrigue.Set against the dramatically imagined backdrop of pre-war Europe, Richard Skinner weaves an impressionistic collage of fiction and non-fiction to conjure the life, loves, fame and infamy of a woman who continues to fascinate almost a century on from her death.