Review: Secret Agency

Secret Agency by G.J. Bellamy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sophie Burgoyne is a minor aristocrat, daughter of an impoverished vicar. She has set up an employment and typing agency in London but is struggling to make ends meet. Then a cousin who works at the Foreign Office stops by with a proposition. There is to be a meeting between representatives of the Greek government and the British government to discuss Britain providing a fleet of submarines. The meeting will be hosted at a stately home over the weekend and the government has just learned that one of the Greek delegate is actually a spy, there to steal the submarine plans and sell them to the highest bidder. Her cousin has persuaded his girlfriend to attend the meeting, as representative of her father's steel business, and wants Sophie to accompany her in disguise as her servant. Sophie's job will be to observe what happens at the meeting and, once the spy has taken photographs of the plans, replace them with photos of much older and imperfect plans. In return, the British government will pay Sophie a considerable sum, enough to eep her business afloat.

Separately, Frank Wright, an architect has been murdered and his father, Sir Ephraim Wright, majority shareholder in Frobisher Bank is being blackmailed; unless he sells the majority of his shares to a middle man for a fraction of their true value his children will be killed. One of Sir Ephraim's other sons Alfred Wright is the designer of the submarine which forms the basis of the negotiations over the weekend.

I love this between the wars spying caper, country houses, aristocracy, blackmail, murder, enterprising young women, mysterious gentlemen, secret societies. can't wait to read the next one.

Read on my Kindle Unlimited subscription.

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