Interbellum intrigue!
Death in Focus (Elena Standish #1) by Anne Perry.
What would you do if you'd been having a grand old time on the Amalfi Coast and then discovered a body in a hotel laundry cupboard. It's 1931, Elena Standish Is working as a photographer at an economics conference. Her sister Margot, who marches to the beat of her own drum, came along for the ride. The opening scene captures this so vividly. At some point Elena decides to join the young man, Ian Newton, who was with her when the body made its presence felt, on a journey to Berlin. Only her companion, that oh so nice young man, is shot on the train. With his dying breath he informs Elena that he's trying to stop an assassination of a top member of the Nazi party in Berlin. His reasons seem lucid so Elena decides to Cary forward with Ian's task.
What we find out as the story continues is that Elena has had a somewhat unfortunate encounter with another man when she was working with the Foreign Office in Paris, embarrassing to her father as a high ranking Foreign Office official, and devastating for Elena. She had been asked to leave.
Along with this it comes to light that Elena's grandfather Lucas, had been the head of MI16 during the World War I, and still has contacts in the service. Some of those contacts are worried about the rise of Hitler and Nazism and of Oswald Mosley's influence in England.
What Elena sees in Berlin, the dangers she finds herself in, are horrendous and as she experiences first hand the lies and dangers behind Hitler's rise to power. (All the time Elena is photographing her journey).
A complex novel full of intrigue and human interest that lays the ground for what I am sure will be, in inimitable Anne Perry style, a startling new series set in this Interbellum period, that of Elena Standish.
I was struck by the almost mantra spoken of various ways throughout, Never Again, 'there should never be another war like the last one.' And one can sympathize with the British people in their memories of anguish, and their hopes that this had been the war to end all wars. We of course know differently. This works well into the way Perry's novel develops.
Strong female leads, old school staunch combatants, a family that has more than carried its share of secrets and heartbreak from WW1 into a new and welcomed age that on the surface seems all that was hoped for, and is in reality completely alien to those hopes. All give an authenticity to this pre World War II thriller!
A Random House ARC via NetGalley
*****
What we find out as the story continues is that Elena has had a somewhat unfortunate encounter with another man when she was working with the Foreign Office in Paris, embarrassing to her father as a high ranking Foreign Office official, and devastating for Elena. She had been asked to leave.
Along with this it comes to light that Elena's grandfather Lucas, had been the head of MI16 during the World War I, and still has contacts in the service. Some of those contacts are worried about the rise of Hitler and Nazism and of Oswald Mosley's influence in England.
What Elena sees in Berlin, the dangers she finds herself in, are horrendous and as she experiences first hand the lies and dangers behind Hitler's rise to power. (All the time Elena is photographing her journey).
A complex novel full of intrigue and human interest that lays the ground for what I am sure will be, in inimitable Anne Perry style, a startling new series set in this Interbellum period, that of Elena Standish.
I was struck by the almost mantra spoken of various ways throughout, Never Again, 'there should never be another war like the last one.' And one can sympathize with the British people in their memories of anguish, and their hopes that this had been the war to end all wars. We of course know differently. This works well into the way Perry's novel develops.
Strong female leads, old school staunch combatants, a family that has more than carried its share of secrets and heartbreak from WW1 into a new and welcomed age that on the surface seems all that was hoped for, and is in reality completely alien to those hopes. All give an authenticity to this pre World War II thriller!
A Random House ARC via NetGalley
*****
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