The clouds gather!

A Darker Reality (Elena Standish #3) by Anne Perry 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Elena Standish though still fragile and smarting over her past mistakes, even if it was seven years ago, is growing stronger. Her world shattered when she was dismissed from the Foreign Office because she’d been involved with a traitor. And then came Berlin! Elena is the granddaughter of Lucas Standish who’d been the head of MI6 during the First World War.

It’s now Spring 1934. Elena and her parents are currently visiting her grandparents on her mother’s side, Wyatt and Dorothy Baylor, in Washington, DC. There’s to be a grand party, celebrating her grandparents sixtieth wedding anniversary. Elena volunteers to take photos. Still working for MI6, she been developing her skills as a newspaper photographer.

Her grandparents move in the upper echelons of Washington society. It’s amongst their friends Elena notices the troubling attitudes towards others—immigrants, non Aryans, and minority groups.

Some present belong to the Free America Party. Speaking to a couple of these adherents Elena is shocked by their positive references to Hitler. This is puzzling to Elena, particularly after her first hand, close call with the Nazis in Berlin twelve months prior. Elena also meets a Captain James Allenby introduced to her by a lively glamorous woman, Lila Worth. Tragedy strikes when Lila is discovered shot dead in the car park. And then her grandfather Wyatt is accused. Elena is determined to prove him innocent. The mysterious Captain Allenby, an attaché in Trade with the British Embassy is there to help her. All roads seem to turn back to scientific discoveries that are happening with MI6 a shadowy presence. 

I loved watching Elena’s intelligence come into play, her attachment to her family, her determination and growth as an MI6 operator.

As Lucas has said looking at the gathering storm under the new German leadership,

“We can’t afford anything but the truth. It may be nothing very much, little more than a shadow in the sky—”

This stanza of Elena’s life, after Berlin, brought face to face with, to her mind, the shocking reactions of many in the United States as Germany under Hitler gains ascendency, is sobering. Shocks that

vibrate so close to home for Elena. (Equally as sobering in today’s ideological climate as well.)

Another rather startling Elena Standish tale from Perry!

A Random House - Ballantine ARC via NetGalley 

Please note: Quotes taken from an advanced reading copy maybe subject to change