Evelyne Redfern #2
In Julia Kelly’s first book in this series, heroine Evelyne Redfern got a job as a clerk in Churchill’s war rooms only to discover a body on her very first day. As she’d been asked by a high up family friend to “keep her eyes open,” she ends up investigating. and solves the crime. In book two, she’s already been sent north for training as a member of the ultra secret Special Operations Executive (SOE), where she’ll be working as an investigator. Her maiden outing is to Blackthorn Park, which has been requisitioned by the government as a center for creating bombs for use in the field. The home office suspects some kind of theft is going on and requests that Evelyne travel there and assess how easily the property can be breached.
Her handler will be the man she worked with in book one, David Poole, and despite their slightly prickly relationship they function efficiently and intelligently together. All goes well as Evelyne checks into the cottage she’s to stay in and reconnoiters Blackthorn Park, but when she clandestinely returns there at night (easily breaking in) there’s a shot and she discovers a dead body, an apparent suicide. Readers, when is a suicide in a mystery novel a suicide? Close to never, and true to form, in this case it is a murder, and not only that, the victim is the man in charge of Blackthorn.
Much to the consternation of the higher-ups there, Evelyne and David quickly assume control of the investigation. They are under a tight deadline though, as Churchill is coming for an inspection in 3 or 4 days, and some of the bombs seem to be inconveniently exploding in the field when they shouldn’t, killing agents. This is a fairly standard story of a wartime investigation in some ways, but Kelly makes it sing with her characters and narrative verve, which really commands the reader’s attention. I didn’t think this installment was quite as good or unusual as the first, but it still has some fascinating threads to it.
The tangle of characters at Blackthorn and the way they relate – or don’t relate – to one another is a marvelous depiction of class interaction in a wartime setting, a time when people of different social classes are forced to work closely together. It’s also an interesting look at how the war was being waged behind the scenes in parts of rural England. The boys may have been at the front, but back home plenty was happening and the scientists and engineers at Blackthorn are hoping to be able to shorten the duration of the war through their work.
I very much enjoy Evelyne as a character. She’s more or less a poor little rich girl – when she lost her mother at a young age, her gad about father deposited her in the care of her aunt. A background in a British boarding school has stiffened her upper lip and her family history makes her want to simply get on with things. In this, she’s an incredibly British character, just carrying on with her war work and dealing with her complex relationship with handler David.
Although her central character is a brash American, these books very much remind me of Susan Elia MacNeal’s wonderful Maggie Hope series. Both women began their careers working in one way or another for Churchill, and from there moved to the Special Operations Executive. As MacNeal has recently wrapped the Maggie series, I’m thinking Evelyne may just satisfy my WWII reading cravings. While I didn’t love this book as much as the first, I still found it entirely enjoyable and look forward to the resolution of the tantalizing cliffhanger Kelly leaves dangling in front of the reader at the end of this book. — Robin Agnew