The Innocent Spy

by Laura Wilson

Overview

Diana Calthorp is a society beauty, escaping a loveless marriage by doing just a little spying for MI5. Ted Stratton is a working-class copper, poking with little passion into the death of a sad, middle-aged woman. In an ordinary world, their paths would never cross, but the war has turned the world on its head. When the two start chatting, they discover they have more in common than one might imagine. Both of them are running up against very peculiar and very solid roadblocks. Could collaboration help find ways around the obstacles?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781937384098
Publisher:	Felony & Mayhem Press
Publication date:	02/16/2012
Series:	Ted Stratton , #1
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Laura Wilson is the crime fiction reviewer for the Guardian. Her first novel, A Little Death, was shortlisted for both the CWA Historical Dagger and the Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original; The Lover was shortlisted for two Daggers and won the Prix du Polar Européen du Point. She lives in London, where she is hard at work on the next Ted Stratton thriller. Visit her Web site at www.laura-wilson.co.uk.

Editorial Reviews

Titled Stratton's War in the U.K., this outstanding first in a series set during WWII won Wilson (A Little Death) the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award. In the summer of 1940, Det. Insp. Ted Stratton investigates an apparent suicide that leads him into a maze of brutal gang violence and bland official evasion. Meanwhile, icily beautiful upper-crust Diana Calthrop tries to escape a hateful marriage by devoting herself to MI5 intrigue. At first, playing spy is fun, but she soon finds herself passionately involved with another agent who may be a murderous sociopath. Wilson convincingly evokes what it was like to sleep in a bomb shelter or stumble through shattered London streets in the dark. The characters are convincing, too, especially Ted and Diana in their tentative, unwilling attraction to each other. Wilson also adroitly handles such issues as the treatment of homosexuality as a crime and the government use of the wartime emergency to justify violating personal rights. (July)

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Publishers Weekly

As the Nazi bombing of London begins in 1940, Detective Inspector Stratton is investigating the death of a silent screen star when he meets undercover agent Diana Calthrop, a new addition to the staff of Colonel Forbes-James, an important member of MI5. Soon their probes lead to Fascist sympathizers who believe that placating Hitler will stop his planned invasion of England. This expert blending of a police procedural with an espionage thriller reveals the danger of trust in the spy world, the naA¯vetA© of young women unexposed to life, and the culpability of men and women who want to avoid war at all costs. Wilson (A Little Death), the Guardian crime fiction reviewer, won the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award for this series debut. Fans of Blitz-era mysteries (e.g., Christopher Hyde's A Gathering of Saints, John Lawton's Inspector Frederick Troy procedurals) will reserve this one.

—Jo Ann Vicarel

Library Journal

MI-5 and the CID protect London-think anti-Semitism, elitism and pithy verbal snapshots of blackout raids and chicanery in the War Office-during the blitz. When silent-screen beauty Mabel Morgan tumbles out her window and gores herself on an iron post, DI Ted Stratton disagrees with higher-ups that it was suicide. Warned off unsanctioned investigating, he looks into the case anyway and learns that the star's only friend, a wispy homosexual, has been beaten by thugs looking for "it" from her rooms. Unsure what "it" is, Stratton keeps digging until he finds an initialed hankie belonging to esteemed Sir Neville alongside an unidentified corpse buried in a churchyard. This discovery brings Stratton to the attention of Col. Forbes-James, the MI-5 chief who's been rooting out fascists, communists and traitorous isolationists with the help of Diana Calthrop, who's infiltrated the Right Club. Diana, weary of her tedious husband and overbearing sister-in-law, begins an affair with a handsome double agent, but like Stratton she's soon awash in lies, half-truths and rumors of homosexual liaisons within the Old Boy network. The denouement is not so much a revelation as a cover-up that leaves more dead and keeps Stratton and Diana quiet for the good of England and their own longevity. Wilson (Telling Lies to Alice, 2004, etc.) kicks off this new series with memorable portraits of witheringly evasive Forbes-James, based in part on Charles Knight, the real spymaster behind Ian Fleming's M, and family man Stratton, the sort of relative readers would all welcome into their homes.

Kirkus Reviews