Wartime London amidst the bombs and blackout makes a bleak but graphic canvas for murder,
nascent Fascism and subversive intrigue. The two protagonists, Stratton and Diana - robust
policeman and refined Secret Service recruit (loosely based on real life agent Joan Miller)
are believable and sympathetically drawn, and their widely differing milieux realistically
portrayed. Indeed, one of the strengths of the novel is the way that Laura Wilson collates
and blends the various professional fields, domestic contexts and social strata. The suave
and seamy, the urbane and humdrum, crisp ruthlessness and crude thuggery are deftly
manipulated to produce a thriller of compelling realism. The pace may be leisurely but the
prose is delivered with clarity, style and punchy humour; and the auxiliary characters -
such as M I 5 chief Forbes-James, or Diana's distasteful husband - are sharply defined.
Blackmail, espionage, illicit sex, unexplained deaths - yes, these are the classic
ingredients of crime fiction; but set against and woven into the heightened ethos of the
London Blitz, they take on an additional frisson. Set in a world of complex ambiguity,
the novel's ending is appropriately oblique and prepares the reader for fresh developments.
Suzette A. Hill

Read by Sean Barrett and Anna Bentinck

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