Because You Despise Me

Morocco, 1941: a dead German courier, two stolen exit visas, an American drifter, a French policeman, a lot of sand, and a lot of blood. Think you know this story? Think again...FREDERIK ABAROA, Resistance fighter and assassin, has come to Maarif to kill a young Nazi officer and steal the signed exit visas that he carries on his person. Maarif, a sweltering heap of wood-and-plaster houses, scabby palm trees and despair, is an important embarkation point for the thousands of refugees that daily flood into the city, hoping to find their way to some neutral country and to safety. It is here that JACOB PLENTY, an American drifter with a mysterious and painful past, runs the upscale brothel known as Paradise.When Feldwebel Horst Stussel is murdered in Jake’s brothel, local police chief CAPTAIN NICOLAS RENARD suspects Jake’s involvement in the crime. Renard has loved Jake since their service in the famous legion étrangère during the Great War, but in this era of the concentration camp, the gas chamber and the infamous ‘pink triangle’ his love for the American dares not speak its name. Like Jake, Renard also has his secrets: his sorrow over the early loss of his mother, the son he illicitly conceived with a woman many years his senior, and the horrific sacrifice he made to save a compatriot from certain death.Renard’s allegiance to the cause of the Free French pits him against the sadistic Nazi officer MAJOR DANZIG, a fanatic who excels at the arts of torture and interrogation; Danzig has come to Maarif in search of CHRISTOPHE “SALAZAR” PICARD – hero, Resistance leader and Jake Plenty’s former lover. Danzig will stop at nothing to uncover Picard’s whereabouts, to find him and destroy him and in so doing, strike a fatal blow at everything that Picard stands for.With an Allied invasion of North Africa mere days away, Jake and Renard must combine their wits, their cunning and their courage to help Christophe Picard escape to America and freedom. In the midst of war and struggle, the two men are drawn into the fight of the century – and each other’s arms.Set in Morocco in 1941, BECAUSE YOU DESPISE ME is the story of two men who find love amid a devastating war, each finding in the other the thing that completes him: courage, friendship, loyalty and the power of enduring love.http://joannesopercook.livejournal.co...