A Traitor in Whitehall

This action-packed yet unconvincing series launch from Kelly (The Last Garden in England) unfolds against the backdrop of WWII London. Factory worker Evelyne Redfern is recruited by family friend Lionel Fletcher, an intelligence operative, to join the typing pool in Winston Churchill’s underground cabinet war rooms. The government suspects there’s a mole in the subterranean complex who’s selling secrets to the Germans, and Mr. Fletcher tasks Evelyne with reporting back to officials about any suspicious goings-on. During her first day on the job, Evelyne stumbles across the body of one of her coworkers, who has been stabbed to death. Judging the officers assigned to the case incompetent, Evelyne, an avid mystery reader, decides to investigate herself. She joins forces with Ministry of Information operative David Poole to look into both the murder and the intelligence leak, and winds up nearly taking over the entire case. Though the world has always been bursting with intelligent, independent, and forceful women, Evelyne—whose brazenness receives shockingly little pushback from her male colleagues—strains believability to the limit, and Kelly, who’s delivered wonderful WWII mysteries in the past, struggles to conjure the period here. Unraveling the mystery has its pleasures, but this doesn’t quite land. (Oct.)