SIGNED, MATA HARI

Yannick Murphy (Abacus, £9.99)

If you want to be a good ghost, stay quiet for almost a century. Then, on the anniversary of your death, begin to haunt the dreams of a writer so that the writer tells your story the way it should be told."

Thus reads the endpiece to Murphy's novel. It is more or less exactly 90 years since Mata Hari was executed, and her ghost has obviously been haunting Murphy's dreams, to the extent that she has written the story of the infamous, exotic, tragic dancer.

The narrator, Mata Hari herself, recounts episodes of her life from her prison cell, awaiting execution for the crime of spying - a charge she denied to the end. She looks back on her life, interspersing snippets here and there, with the thread of time weaving in and out of the present. We learn her story gradually, between exchanges with the prison doctor.

Hers is a fascinating story, and Murphy revels in the telling of it. The novel opens dramatically, and significantly, with Mata Hari recalling the time when she cheated death during her childhood in The Netherlands, when she walked across the sandbanks, and narrowly escaped capture by the man-eating tide - the memory and inspiration of this stayed with her throughout her life.

This was just one significant incident in an eventful life, lived to the edge, at the edge. An unorthodox childhood led to an unhappy marriage to a Dutch naval officer, who took her to Indonesia. There, among the rich beauty of the jungles, she immersed herself in the local culture, to the disapproval of her husband. The marriage became increasingly ugly; her son died in unexplained circumstances; and she returned to Europe to live a life alone. Then began the temple dancing, the shocking but captivating dancing with veils, and ultimately the arrest for spying. Yet she was always yearning for her lost children.

Mata Hari's story in itself is a fascinating one. Murphy has combined its truths and myths with her own interpretations and ideas to produce a tale that is truly haunting; completely mesmerising.