A Traitor in Whitehall
A Mystery
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
From Julia Kelly, internationally bestselling author of The Last Dance of the Debutante, comes the first in the mysterious and immersive Evelyne Redfern series, A Traitor in Whitehall.
"Kelly spins an Agatha Christie-esque mystery . . . thoroughly delightful and well-researched."—Susan Elia MacNeal
1940, England: Evelyne Redfern, known as “The Parisian Orphan” as a child, is working on the line at a munitions factory in wartime London. When Mr. Fletcher, one of her father’s old friends, spots Evelyne on a night out, Evelyne finds herself plunged into the world of Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s cabinet war rooms.
However, shortly after she settles into her new role as a secretary, one of the girls at work is murdered, and Evelyne must use all of her amateur sleuthing expertise to find the killer. But doing so puts her right in the path of David Poole, a cagey minister’s aide who seems determined to thwart her investigations. That is, until Evelyne finds out David’s real mission is to root out a mole selling government secrets to Britain’s enemies, and the pair begrudgingly team up.
With her quick wit, sharp eyes, and determination, will Evelyne be able to find out who’s been selling England’s secrets and catch a killer, all while battling her growing attraction to David?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This action-packed yet unconvincing series launch from Kelly (The Last Garden in England) unfolds against the backdrop of WWII London. Factory worker Evelyne Redfern is recruited by family friend Lionel Fletcher, an intelligence operative, to join the typing pool in Winston Churchill's underground cabinet war rooms. The government suspects there's a mole in the subterranean complex who's selling secrets to the Germans, and Mr. Fletcher tasks Evelyne with reporting back to officials about any suspicious goings-on. During her first day on the job, Evelyne stumbles across the body of one of her coworkers, who has been stabbed to death. Judging the officers assigned to the case incompetent, Evelyne, an avid mystery reader, decides to investigate herself. She joins forces with Ministry of Information operative David Poole to look into both the murder and the intelligence leak, and winds up nearly taking over the entire case. Though the world has always been bursting with intelligent, independent, and forceful women, Evelyne—whose brazenness receives shockingly little pushback from her male colleagues—strains believability to the limit, and Kelly, who's delivered wonderful WWII mysteries in the past, struggles to conjure the period here. Unraveling the mystery has its pleasures, but this doesn't quite land.
