{"id":5955,"date":"2024-09-25T06:38:50","date_gmt":"2024-09-25T13:38:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=5955"},"modified":"2024-09-25T06:38:50","modified_gmt":"2024-09-25T13:38:50","slug":"julia-kelly-betrayal-at-blackthorn-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/julia-kelly-betrayal-at-blackthorn-park\/","title":{"rendered":"Julia Kelly: Betrayal at Blackthorn Park"},"content":{"rendered":"

Evelyne Redfern #2<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In Julia Kelly\u2019s first book in this series, heroine Evelyne Redfern got a job as a clerk in Churchill\u2019s war rooms only to discover a body on her very first day.\u00a0 As she\u2019d been asked by a high up family friend to \u201ckeep her eyes open,\u201d she ends up investigating. and solves the crime. In book two, she\u2019s already been sent north for training as a member of the ultra secret Special Operations Executive (SOE), where she\u2019ll be working as an investigator.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 All goes well as Evelyne checks into the cottage she\u2019s to stay in and reconnoiters Blackthorn Park, but when she clandestinely returns there at night (easily breaking in) there\u2019s a shot and she discovers a dead body, an apparent suicide. Readers, when is a suicide in a mystery novel a suicide?\u00a0 Close to never, and true to form, in this case it is <\/em>a murder, and not only that, the victim is the man in charge of Blackthorn.<\/p>\n

Much to the consternation of the higher-ups there, Evelyne and David quickly assume control of the investigation.\u00a0 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\u2019t, killing agents.\u00a0 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\u2019s attention.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t think this installment was quite as good or unusual as the first, but it still has some fascinating threads to it.<\/p>\n

The tangle of characters at Blackthorn and the way they relate \u2013 or don\u2019t relate \u2013 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.\u00a0 It\u2019s also an interesting look at how the war was being waged behind the scenes in parts of rural England.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

I very much enjoy Evelyne as a character.\u00a0 She\u2019s more or less a poor little rich girl \u2013\u00a0 when she lost her mother at a young age, her gad about father deposited her in the care of her aunt.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 In this, she\u2019s an incredibly British character, just carrying on with her war work and dealing with her complex relationship with handler David.<\/p>\n

Although her central character is a brash American, these books very much remind me of Susan Elia MacNeal\u2019s 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.\u00a0 As MacNeal has recently wrapped the Maggie series, I\u2019m thinking Evelyne may just satisfy my WWII reading cravings.\u00a0 While I didn\u2019t 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.\u00a0 —\u00a0Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Evelyne Redfern #2 In Julia Kelly\u2019s first book in this series, heroine Evelyne Redfern got a job as a clerk in Churchill\u2019s war rooms only to discover a body on her very first day.\u00a0 As she\u2019d been asked by a high up family friend to \u201ckeep her eyes open,\u201d she ends up investigating. and solves … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1835,10,1834,100,1276,1836,1833],"class_list":["post-5955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-evelyne-redfern","tag-historical","tag-julia-kelly","tag-minotaur-books","tag-robin-agnew","tag-special-operations-executive","tag-wwii-britain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5955"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5999,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5955\/revisions\/5999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}