From the Publisher
"Readers will travel breathlessly along with Evelyn as she navigates the treacherous waters of lifelong allegiances and new alliances, foreign dangers and secrets uncovered much closer to home. Starford has penned both a beguiling tale of espionage and a noteworthy commentary on torn loyalties and the unthinkable choices of war." — Pam Jenoff, author of THE ORPHAN'S TALE and THE LOST GIRLS OF PARIS
“A well-crafted spy novel examines the perils of espionage’s foundation in personal relationships. . . . The intriguing story of a young woman’s espionage career during World War II weaves in a critique of the British class system. . . . The book is rich with historical details, right down to clothing styles and furnishings. . . .The novel’s depiction of Evelyn’s career is exciting, but it also suggests the human cost: No matter how skilled her performances, to those above her in the social hierarchy, she’s expendable.” — Kirkus Reviews
“Prepare to fall in awe with Evelyn Varley, the titular unexpected MI5 agent in this fast-paced thriller filled with more twists than a bag of pretzels. Set during World War II, memoirist Starford's fiction debut is a must-read for historical fiction buffs.” — E! Online
“A fast paced tale with plenty of plot twists and enough complexity to place it somewhere between a historical genre novel and a literary thriller.” — The Guardian
“A beguiling and compelling tale of an otherwise ordinary women, an unlikely spy caught between the personal and the political in the machine of war.” — The Age (Australia)
“Class and ideologies collide in Starford’s consummate debut, a clever combination of home front drama and espionage thriller….The author does an excellent job of recreating London before, during, and after the war, and in Evelyn has created a complex heroine whose sense of duty gets her in way over her head. With suspense worthy of Hitchcock and a moral reckoning straight out of Le Carré or Graham Greene, this is a winner." — Publishers Weekly
“[A] subtle yet moving story of personal and professional camouflage, of hidden selves fearing the light.” — Booklist
“An Unlikely Spy gripped me to the end: I devoured it. Rebecca Starford has created an exceptional novel about World War II, bringing 1940s England to life in formidable, compelling detail and thrusting the reader into a world of wartime spies, betrayal and surprising revelation. What a rare treat to find a novel that offers both white-knuckled suspense and evocative, beautiful prose. I loved it.” — Hannah Kent, author of Burial Rites
“Rebecca Starford seems to be the inheritor of the cool, narrative elegance of Graham Greene and John le Carré. Her building of the tale to reach the critical moral apogee of this book seems effortless, and she has found a fascinating and unexpected World War II corner of espionage and intelligence to exploit for a plot that runs like milk and honey.” — Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler’s List
“A poignantly rendered narrative map of one woman's journey from misfit to spy—and a thought-provoking examination of the gently human desires that lay the groundwork for pernicious extremism. Rebecca Starford has given us a rousing reminder of the power of our choices.” — Juliet Grames, author of The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna
The Guardian
A fast paced tale with plenty of plot twists and enough complexity to place it somewhere between a historical genre novel and a literary thriller.
Booklist
[A] subtle yet moving story of personal and professional camouflage, of hidden selves fearing the light.
The Age (Australia)
A beguiling and compelling tale of an otherwise ordinary women, an unlikely spy caught between the personal and the political in the machine of war.”
E! Online
Prepare to fall in awe with Evelyn Varley, the titular unexpected MI5 agent in this fast-paced thriller filled with more twists than a bag of pretzels. Set during World War II, memoirist Starford's fiction debut is a must-read for historical fiction buffs.
Thomas Keneally
Rebecca Starford seems to be the inheritor of the cool, narrative elegance of Graham Greene and John le Carré. Her building of the tale to reach the critical moral apogee of this book seems effortless, and she has found a fascinating and unexpected World War II corner of espionage and intelligence to exploit for a plot that runs like milk and honey.”
Pam Jenoff
"Readers will travel breathlessly along with Evelyn as she navigates the treacherous waters of lifelong allegiances and new alliances, foreign dangers and secrets uncovered much closer to home. Starford has penned both a beguiling tale of espionage and a noteworthy commentary on torn loyalties and the unthinkable choices of war."
Hannah Kent
An Unlikely Spy gripped me to the end: I devoured it. Rebecca Starford has created an exceptional novel about World War II, bringing 1940s England to life in formidable, compelling detail and thrusting the reader into a world of wartime spies, betrayal and surprising revelation. What a rare treat to find a novel that offers both white-knuckled suspense and evocative, beautiful prose. I loved it.”
Juliet Grames
A poignantly rendered narrative map of one woman's journey from misfit to spy—and a thought-provoking examination of the gently human desires that lay the groundwork for pernicious extremism. Rebecca Starford has given us a rousing reminder of the power of our choices.
Booklist
[A] subtle yet moving story of personal and professional camouflage, of hidden selves fearing the light.
Kirkus Reviews
2021-03-17
The intriguing story of a young woman’s espionage career during World War II weaves in a critique of the British class system.
What sort of people got recruited to be spies by Britain’s famed MI5 intelligence agency during World War II? This absorbing historical novel makes clear they weren’t much like James Bond. Evelyn Varley is a restless young woman living in London in 1939, working for a cosmetics company and making no use at all of her Oxford degree in German, when she’s invited for a rather mysterious job interview. She rapidly goes from typing up reports to infiltrating a group of Nazi sympathizers—and discovering a disturbing personal connection. Starford takes an interesting tack with Evelyn’s background. The daughter of a clerk and a homemaker, she attended a posh boarding school as a scholarship girl, which meant she would either suffer bullies or remake herself in the images of the upper-class girls who harassed her. She chose the latter and did it so well she got into Oxford and became a sort of second daughter to the family of her best friend, Sally—a family that’s one of the wealthiest in England. When Evelyn goes to work for MI5, she discovers others who, like her, are outsiders in the rigid British class system but have found ways to assimilate by assuming an identity, an essential part of spycraft. As the war looms, the challenge for Evelyn is assimilating with people she finds abhorrent. Most of the novel is set in the years just before and after Britain’s entry into the war. Occasional chapters flash-forward to 1948, when Evelyn is trying to put her life back together after some unnamed catastrophe and tentatively falling in love. The book is rich with historical details, right down to clothing styles and furnishings. The plot sometimes slows amid those details, but most of the book is well paced. The novel’s depiction of Evelyn’s career is exciting, but it also suggests the human cost: No matter how skilled her performances, to those above her in the social hierarchy, she’s expendable.
A well-crafted spy novel examines the perils of espionage’s foundation in personal relationships.
