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The Innocent Spy: Summary and book reviews of The Innocent Spy by Laura Wilson, plus links to an excerpt from The Innocent Spy and a biography of Laura Wilson.
The Innocent Spy A Mystery
by
Laura Wilson
Hardcover: Jul 2009,
464 pages.
London, June 1940. When the body of silent screen star Mabel Morgan is found impaled on a wrought-iron fence, the coroner rules her death as suicide. Detective Ted Stratton is not convinced and suspects that Morgans fatal fall may have been the work of one of Sohos most notorious gangsters.
Meanwhile, MI5 agent Diana Calthrop is leading a covert operation when she discovers that her boss is involved in espionage. Only when Strattons path crosses Dianas does the pair start to uncover the truth. And soon they also begin to realize they like each other a little too much...
Book Reviews
BookBrowse - Vy Armour
If you like a book you can sink your teeth into, a bevy of colorful characters, and an accurate and evocative historical setting - and a bizarre local murder mystery solved amid WII espionage - I highly recommend The Innocent Spy. Full Review (members only, 863 words).
Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. This outstanding first in a series set during WWII won Wilson (A Little Death) the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award.
Library Journal
Starred Review. Fans of Blitz-era mysteries will reserve this one.
Kirkus Reviews
Wilson (Telling Lies to Alice, 2004, etc.) kicks off this new series with memorable portraits of witheringly evasive Forbes-James, based in part on Charles Knight, the real spymaster behind Ian Fleming's M....
The Spectator (UK)
The novel isn't subtle but it exudes the sort of high-grade glossy competence that characterises a good Agatha Christie story or an episode of The Sopranos. And that’s a considerable compliment.
The Guardian (UK)
Wilson has established a reputation for stylish psychological crime; the first in her series featuring decent copper Stratton is enriched with warmth and humour as well.
The Telegraph (UK)
[This is] is Laura Wilson's most ambitious book, a story of treason, blackmail and murder set in London in 1940. The city's wartime atmosphere is impeccably created and there are two brilliantly drawn characters.
You are about to travel to Edgecombe St. Mary, a small village in the English countryside filled with rolling hills, thatched cottages, and a cast of characters both hilariously original and as familiar as the members of your own family.
The Postmistress is an unforgettable tale of the secrets we must bear, or bury. It is about what happens to love during wartime, when those we cherish leave. And how every story-of love or war-is about looking left when we should have been looking right.
Masterfully blending true events with fiction, this blockbuster historical thriller delivers a page-turning murder mystery set on the sixteenth-century Oxford University campus.
Kostova's masterful new novel travels from American cities to the coast of Normandy, from the late 19th century to the late 20th, from young love to last love. The Swan Thieves is a story of obsession, history's losses, and the power of art to preserve human hope.
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