A Sufi Muslim secret agent? If such oxymorons are the stuff that incredible stories are made of, then Shauna Singh Baldwin is on the right track. It is the plot of her second novel The Tiger Claw (Knopf) which is nominated for the Giller's Prize, the Canadian award for fiction in English. Baldwin, who runs The Safe House, a popular, espionage-themed restaurant in Milwaukee, is not one to give intrigues a miss. So when Gaston Vandermeersche, former leader of the Dutch Underground, spiced things up one day with the tale of Noor Inayat Khan, "an Indian princess" in the Gestapo prison, Baldwin was hooked. After her debut novel What the Body Remembers, Baldwin went on the spy's route. The plot thickened.

Daughter of Shaikh Inayat Khan, an Indian Sufi, Noor had fled from Paris during the Nazi Occupation. Only to return as Madeline, the spy of Winston Churchill's Special Operations, to send radio messages from the occupied territory. There are many writings on the diva la resistance who was executed by the SS, and honoured by the British with the OBE. The unwritten thread in the tale, Baldwin discovered, was Noor's love affair with Armand, a Jewish pianist. Says Baldwin: "Through the novel I finally wrote my way to the possible explanations of Noor's search for her beloved in World War II France." Everything was there: a unique mix of regions and religions to add to the paciness of the Ludlumite thrillers.

Baldwin followed in Noor's footsteps through England, France and Germany. She visited apartments used by her as safe houses and the prison where she was kept in chains for 10 months. "I walked around Suresnes, the quaint, little town outside Paris, where Noor grew up, went to La Mosque where she must have prayed as a child." In India, she travelled to Noor's ancestral home in Vadodara, Gujarat. Baldwin, an Indo-Canadian Sikh with a Green Card, could relate to Noor: "Home is a place with no fixed address. Like Noor, I accept that better than monocultural people do."

So will the Giller's be Baldwin's? "I am just thrilled to be nominated with writers like Alice Munroe, Paul Quarrington and Pauline Holdstock," says the 42-year-old. Between promotional tours and a game of ice hockey, the next novel is also being written. And it is about... ? "That is top secret." Suspense thriller, did you say?

-By Nitish S. Rele