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ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSVirginia Hall grows up in Baltimore in a family that expects her to marry well, but she wants a career of her own and writes in her school yearbook, "I must have liberty." She studies in Paris and Vienna, learns French and German, and dreams of becoming a diplomat, only to be turned away by the State Department. Then, in 1933, a hunting accident in Turkey costs her most of her left leg, and the wooden prosthetic she names Cuthbert becomes part of her life from then on. When the State Department later rejects her a second time, this time because of her disability, she takes a job driving an ambulance in France instead, and when Germany invades in 1940 she keeps working through the chaos of the French collapse. A chance meeting with a stranger in a Spanish border town gives her a London phone number that changes everything, connecting her to a new British spy agency willing to send a one-legged American woman into Nazi-occupied France when almost no one else will try.
Free Battle of the Books questions for Agent Most Wanted: The Never-Before-Told Story of the Most Dangerous Spy of World War II
SPOILERSEvery one of these has the same answer, and that is the point. In a real battle the question is read aloud with a dozen other books in play, and students have a few seconds to place it. Here is what a battle might ask about Agent Most Wanted: The Never-Before-Told Story of the Most Dangerous Spy of World War II. Use them as a quiz, a trivia round, or BOTB practice.
Where in the book they come from
- Early in the book
In what book does a woman give her wooden leg a man's pet name?
✓ Answer
Agent Most Wanted: The Never-Before-Told Story of the Most Dangerous Spy of World War II by Sonia Purnell
The prosthetic leg was hollow, painted, and still heavy at eight pounds, and Virginia named it Cuthbert. The author points out that she never explained why, and Cuthbert turns up again and again as the companion she has to haul over walls and up stairs.
- First half
In what book does a starving visitor in filthy clothes get a bath and clean pajamas?
✓ Answer
Agent Most Wanted: The Never-Before-Told Story of the Most Dangerous Spy of World War II by Sonia Purnell
Ben Cowburn had crossed France over five nail biting nights to warn Virginia that the Germans knew roughly where she was. Instead of panicking, she ran him a bath and sent word to Marseille to arrange his escape over the Pyrenees, which astonished him.
- First half
In what book does an old lady walking past with three children mean the plan is on?
✓ Answer
Agent Most Wanted: The Never-Before-Told Story of the Most Dangerous Spy of World War II by Sonia Purnell
Virginia was too well known to go near the camp herself, so she arranged a signal no guard would ever think twice about. The old woman with children meant the escape was going ahead that night, and an old man would have meant it was called off.
- Second half
In what book does an old cheese seller shuffle up to German convoys to listen in?
✓ Answer
Agent Most Wanted: The Never-Before-Told Story of the Most Dangerous Spy of World War II by Sonia Purnell
Virginia helps the farmer's mother make extra cheese so she has an excuse to approach soldiers, croaking in an old woman's voice. She eavesdropped using the German she had picked up as a student in Vienna.
- Second half
In what book does a line of French poetry on the radio signal that the invasion is coming?
✓ Answer
Agent Most Wanted: The Never-Before-Told Story of the Most Dangerous Spy of World War II by Sonia Purnell
On the evening of June 5, 1944, the BBC French Service read out a line from a Paul Verlaine poem telling the Resistance that Allied troops were about to land. Virginia had waited three years for that moment.
- Near the end
In what book does a leader knot an orange silk square at her neck to hide her codes?
✓ Answer
Agent Most Wanted: The Never-Before-Told Story of the Most Dangerous Spy of World War II by Sonia Purnell
Virginia turns up at the drop zone on the high plateau in an army jacket and khaki trousers instead of a summer dress, and thirty men gasp at the sight. The scarf was both a flourish and a hiding place for her transmitting codes.
