Rating: 4/5
Review:
An enjoyable read with convincing period detail
I hadn't read any of this series before and took a punt on
this without a great deal of expectation, to be honest. After a somewhat uninspiring opening, I
enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would.
Set in 1940, Miss Seeton is an art teacher in her late 20s
with, it transpires, an uncanny knack of seeing through to the heart of things
in her drawings. This, by convoluted
means, leads her to be sent undercover by Military Intelligence to investigate
possible sabotage in an aircraft factory.
The plot itself is pretty negligible; it felt rather more
like a fleshed-out short story to me, and after the opening 30 pages or so I
began to wonder whether anything was actually going to happen. However, a story does emerge, I began to warm
to the characters, the writing is good and the period is very well conjured –
far better than in a some books set in the Second World War which take
themselves much more seriously than this does.
The light, often rather humorous tone is underpinned by some thorough
research, very readable prose and decent character portraits, which makes the
book more than just a bit of inconsequential fluff. It's no masterpiece of literature – and nor
does it intend to be – but it's rather involving and surprisingly enjoyable.
This probably isn’t the best place to start with Miss
Seeton, but I can still recommend it even to novices like me and I'll almost
certainly be trying more in the series.
(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)
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