About the book: year / The book by Emile Massard, the military commandant of Paris during the First World War, talks about several cases in which female spies were involved. The main place in the book is occupied by the story of Mata Hari, in the organization of whose execution Major Massar took a very direct part in his position. He also attended the closed trial in which the Dutch dancer was found guilty and sentenced to death. When reading a book, you should be aware of the author's bias. Massard is biased - both as a military man directly related to the events he describes, and simply as a Frenchman who wrote a book just four years after the end of the bloody conflict. A certain harshness of his assessments is associated with this. It must be said that Massar’s version of Mata Hari’s undoubted guilt in espionage against France has long been subject to revision by other authors. Among them we should name, first of all, the Dutchman Sam Waagenaar, the Englishwoman Julia Wheelwright, the German Gerhard Hirschfeld and the Frenchman Philippe Coll. “Spies in Paris” is a memoir, first-hand information, and it is valuable precisely for its authenticity and biased author’s position, sometimes turning into spy mania..