The first in a brand-new WW II historical thriller series introduces Sergeant Cathy Marsden – a female police officer working for the Special Investigation Branch – who risks her life to protect the city of Leeds from an escaped German spy!
Leeds, 1941. As the war rages across Europe, Police Sergeant Cathy Marsden’s life since she was seconded to the Special Investigation Branch has remained focused on deserters and home-front crimes. Until now.
Things take a chilling turn when Cathy’s civil servant brother, Dan, arrives from London with a dark secret: he is working for the XX Committee – a special MI5 unit set up to turn German spies into double agents. But one of these agents has escaped and is heading for Leeds, sent to destroy targets key to the war effort. Suddenly Cathy and the squad are plunged into an unfamiliar world of espionage and subterfuge.
With the fate of the country and the war in the balance, failure is not an option, and Cathy must risk everything, including her own life, to stop a spy.
CW – past rape of a minor character is implied, police brutality during interrogations is implied
Dear Mr. Nickson,
World War II is “the time to be” in books right now and I’ve read plenty of books using this time frame. What drew my attention to this one is the fact that the lead character in this (I presume it will be a) series is a woman.
Cathy Marsden is a Leeds woman, born and bred. She started in the police force and has worked her way up before being seconded to the Special Investigation Branch which (if I have it correctly) focuses on military deserters as well as crime done by military members. She’s proven herself, except to one arsehole, as a competent squaddie but when her clever clogs older brother returns from London and her squad gets turned over to him, all her old feelings of being not quite as good emerge.
Dan is now in XX (part of MI5 – think “The Man Who Never Was) and there’s an escaped Dutch spy who is working for the Germans on the loose. There are plenty of potential wartime targets nearby, a ticking time clock, and eight sticks of dynamite in the hands of a determined man.
One thing I have to get off my chest is how the book starts with an abundance of sentence fragments. Paragraphs and paragraphs of sentence fragments. Fragments here. Fragments there. Annoying fragments everywhere. Eventually this lessens but it drove me batty for a long time. I kind of like learning new words and phrases and I wondered at the lack of Leeds dialect for the characters. Every now and then we get an owt or nowt and some words are used that I guessed at before usage clarified it for me but I wish this had been a stronger part of the book.
The plot is not anything new but it’s competently done and makes sense. Along with finding the spy, there are other issues that arise as the team tries to track down the Dutchman. I had to occasionally stop and remind myself who some of the secondary and tertiary characters and subplots were but eventually most of them circled back around and tied into the main story.
While it’s probably the reality of doing something like this, the time and shoe leather spent going all over Leeds, showing the spy’s picture, checking possible leads, and following up on clues only to miss catching the man again and again got a little dull. I guess I’m used to a tight hour and three quarters thriller movie. Real police detective work is, at times, … boring.
Where the book shines is in how well Cathy knows her city and especially in how she can read people. I also enjoyed meeting her bestie who is now doing war work as well as Cathy’s salt-of-the-earth parents. The friction between Cathy and her hotshot brother Dan only shows up every now and then but in the end, Cathy realizes that at least she understands her brother more now even if they’ll never be close. Also well done is the shock that Cathy goes through at the end and her realization that what happened will likely mark her for life.
I will certainly look at future entries in this series but have to be honest and give this one a B-/C+
~Jayne
