A Question of Betrayal

July 1, 2020
Only four months after "that desperate affair in Berlin" from Death in Focus (2019), photographer Elena Standish is called on again for another dangerous mission in 1933 Germany. Peter Howard, of MI6, wants Elena to know that Aiden Strother, the lover who betrayed her six years ago, didn't betray his country as well: He's been sent into Trieste as an undercover agent. Now that Aiden's handler, waiter Max Klausner, has disappeared, Peter is worried that Aiden's in danger as well, and he needs to extract him and the information he has on a radical splinter group of the Fatherland Front, which is raising money for the National Socialists, as quickly as possible. Since nobody knows Aiden better than Elena, she's the logical, albeit unwilling candidate. And she adapts to the rapidly shifting landscape of alliances and treacheries just as well as last time. When Elena's sister, war widow Margot Driscoll, travels to Berlin for her friend Cecily Cordell's wedding, she finds herself brushing up against the Fatherland Front as well. So does Elena's grandfather, former MI6 chief Lucas Standish, when his old Cambridge friend Gladstone Canning dies under suspicious circumstances soon after warning Lucas about the Front's activity. How can the benighted, divided Brits, their most trusted institutions honeycombed with traitors, possibly stand up to such nefarious threats? Readers who share Perry's comfortable 20/20 historical hindsight won't be surprised by a thing.

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Starred review from July 6, 2020
At the start of bestseller Perry’s excellent sequel to 2019’s Death in Focus, likewise set in 1933, Peter Howard, of British Military Intelligence, offers fledgling British spy Elena Standish, a gifted photographer who’s fluent in German and Italian, a new assignment. Aiden Strother, one of the service’s most important assets, is gathering information in Italy, but his handler there is unreachable at a crucial moment. Having learned that Strother’s cover has been blown, Howard wants Elena to go to Trieste, posing as a photographer, to warn Strother to get out safely with as much data as possible. Elena accepts the responsibility, even though she feels Strother betrayed her trust six years earlier when he was posing as a Nazi sympathizer and cost her her position at the Foreign Office. Meanwhile, Elena’s older sister, Margot, adds to the intrigue by traveling to Berlin for the wedding of a childhood friend to a Gestapo officer. Perry expertly blends character development with plot surprises. This prolific author shows no sign of losing steam. Agent: Donald Maass, Donald Maass Literary.

August 1, 2020
Germany, 1933. Before long, the Nazi wolf will be loosed upon Europe. British intelligence, seeing it coming, has a problem: a key agent in Trieste has disappeared. The spymaster believes the fastest way to find him is to send someone who knows him on sight: the woman he betrayed in Perry's 2019 Death in Focus. The woman, Elena Standish, is the victim of a theme popular in old-school spy stories: betrayal of country is also betrayal of love and friendship. Elena's attempt to understand the mystery man who betrayed her takes up about half the novel and is relayed in tense, understated prose with limpid moments: Italian light "touching the ancient stones so tenderly." The other half is a straight-out detective story: a nice man who has information connected to Elena's quest is dead. Accident, say the police. Not so, says a friend, and deductive dazzlement follows. Both plotlines have to do with Germany's annexation of Austria, and we know how that ended. No matter. This manages to be a winning mix of crime story and espionage drama, boat chase and seaplane rescue included.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)