Beattie Cavendish and the Highland Hideaway by Mary-Jane RileyMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
`Three and a half stars.
Beattie Cavendish is a former WW2 member of SOE who has been 'relegated' to translating communications for GCHQ, with the occasional field trip. her boss calls her into the office and tells her to go to a remote listening station in Scotland, the commander has gone missing (possibly drunk and/or with one of his fancy women) and there is a suspicion of espionage - some intelligence is not being passed on and GCHQ is concerned that our American allies could be cosying up to former Nazis who have not shed their old allegiances. Her boss also, rather cryptically, suggests Beattie should visit her uncle who lives close to the station.
When Beattie gets there she finds her uncle has also mysteriously disappeared with all the evidence suggesting it was not planned. Can she keep up her cover story, investigate her uncle's disappearance, and investigate the commander's disappearance single-handedly? Well no, so she enlist the help of private investigator Patrick Corrigan.
I enjoyed this and it had a good pace from the start, but the ending felt a bit hurried. In fact I re-read the last chapters this morning thinking I might have missed something. But, no.
Also, there is a lot of harking back to what Beattie and Patrick did during the war with very little resolution - I think that needs to be sorted in the next book as it leads to a lot of repetition.
Overall, I liked it but I didn't love it.
I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.
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