A Traitor in Whitehall

I just finished A Traitor in Whitehall by Julia Kelly @juliakellywrites and here are my musings.

It's 1940 in London England and the war is raging. Evelyne Redfern is approached by a man and offered a job in the typing pool in the middle of Churchill's cabinet war rooms. He needs a set of eyes and ears in there to uncover any skullduggery.

Evelyne, also known as the parisian orphan, sets about to do her new job when she gets locked in a room with a woman who is not well liked and she happens to have been murdered.

She can't help herself and starts her own investigation which puts her in the cross hairs of the one and only David Poole. She soon learns he is there to discover who the mole is and the pair, albeit begrudgingly, decide to team up.

Evelyne is determined to catch the killer and the mole but can she do it while keeping her feelings for David in check?

As far as mysteries goes, this one was a tad slower than I like and I nearly gave up right away but there was something about Evelyne that made me keep going and boy oh boy, I am so glad I did. Evelyne had become one of my favorite female book characters. She's smart, fearless and compassionate. I love the backdrop of the war without it being the main focus of the book.

The mystery was cleverly done too and had me guessing the whole time. I love espionage reads and this one had blackmail, murder, moles and more! I was definitely entertained all the way through the book. I just wish the pace had been a bit quicker but I can overlook that for how well the book was written and that this is just book one in what I hope will be a very long series.

I loved the ending. It set up the next book perfectly without a tacky cliffhanger. I hate those. There wasn't any romance but you can definitely feel something brewing between Evelyne and David. I also hope to learn more about Evelyne's parents. That was a pretty interesting part for me.

4 stars. Thank you to @minotaur_books for my gifted copy. Out now.

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