Appointment in Paris
Picked as Hatchards Book of the Month September 2025
One of The Times Best Historical Fiction Books of 2025
Chosen as Mail On Sunday Best New Fiction
Chosen in the Financial Times Best Thrillers of 2025
Selected in Daily Express Best Books of 2025
Following an acclaimed debut outing, Harry Fox, an MI5 Watcher, now suspended, and his associate Stella Fry are reunited during Britain's darkest hour in this gripping espionage thriller.
April 1940, and Britain is in turmoil. Chamberlain's government is faltering, and a German invasion may be only weeks away.
A body, wearing the uniform of a Luftwaffe captain, is found in the grounds of Trent Park - a stately home and now a prison to house high level German POWs. Trent Park's true purpose, however, is intelligence, gathered covertly from prisoners by secret listeners.
The morning after the discovery of the body, one of the listeners goes missing, along with a gun from the firing range. Horrified that this could blow the highly confidential operation wide open, the missing man must be tracked down.
Cue Harry Fox, a former MI5 Watcher, now suspended. He is desperate to assist the war effort but he's over the conscription age. Then his former boss gets in touch with a job for him, to track down the missing man. But, he stipulates, it must also involve Harry's former associate, Stella Fry.
Stella returns home from work in the blackout to find a crowd outside her flat. She is told that a young woman in the building has had a fatal accident. The dead woman is called Stella Fry. Outraged, Stella suspects that this is the work of her erstwhile friend, Harry Fox. But why on earth would he go to such lengths to contact her?
One of The Times Best Historical Fiction Books of 2025
Chosen as Mail On Sunday Best New Fiction
Chosen in the Financial Times Best Thrillers of 2025
Selected in Daily Express Best Books of 2025
Following an acclaimed debut outing, Harry Fox, an MI5 Watcher, now suspended, and his associate Stella Fry are reunited during Britain's darkest hour in this gripping espionage thriller.
April 1940, and Britain is in turmoil. Chamberlain's government is faltering, and a German invasion may be only weeks away.
A body, wearing the uniform of a Luftwaffe captain, is found in the grounds of Trent Park - a stately home and now a prison to house high level German POWs. Trent Park's true purpose, however, is intelligence, gathered covertly from prisoners by secret listeners.
The morning after the discovery of the body, one of the listeners goes missing, along with a gun from the firing range. Horrified that this could blow the highly confidential operation wide open, the missing man must be tracked down.
Cue Harry Fox, a former MI5 Watcher, now suspended. He is desperate to assist the war effort but he's over the conscription age. Then his former boss gets in touch with a job for him, to track down the missing man. But, he stipulates, it must also involve Harry's former associate, Stella Fry.
Stella returns home from work in the blackout to find a crowd outside her flat. She is told that a young woman in the building has had a fatal accident. The dead woman is called Stella Fry. Outraged, Stella suspects that this is the work of her erstwhile friend, Harry Fox. But why on earth would he go to such lengths to contact her?
Reviews
In this fine espionage thriller, set in 1940, Jane Thynne has returned to the memorable characters encountered in her 2024 novel Midnight in Vienna. She has fashioned another work that blends a wholly convincing evocation of the period with a compelling narrative.
Nick Rennison, Sunday Times Best Historical Fiction of 2025
Excellent . . . London before the Blitz is superbly evoked, as is Paris before the German invasion, but it is Miss Fry's indomitable character and ingenuity that shine through.
Geoffrey Wansell, Daily Mail
A tangled, high stakes read
Anna Bonet, i Newspaper
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/appointment-in-paris-with-jane-thynne/id1584495856?i=1000725222038
Aspects of History podcast
The plot burns slowly but the smart characterisation and lashings of period detail more than justify the time taken
John Williams, Mail on Sunday
This is an excellent account with plenty of 'real' characters from Noel Coward to Churchill, Ian Fleming to Canaris, Maxwell Knight to Philip Sassoon, but the story is very grounded and focuses on a hunt for German spies, the world of German emigres, who provide many of the listeners, the miseries of rationing, the complexities of human relationships, (which are handled very very well) wartime sex and the Fall of France. This is not a plot that after the initial murder focuses on killings, but one where relationships are to the fore. It works very well.
Jeremy Black, The Oldie Novel of the Month
A successful blend of crime fiction, espionage and history... the Fox and Fry series continues to intrigue and entertain. Highly recommended.
Richard Foreman, Aspects of History
There are go-to authors when it comes to WWII, Rory Clements, Alan Furst, Alex Gerlis, Graham Hurley and, for sure, Jane Thynne.
Paul Burke, Aspects of Crime Magazine
'Meticulous research underpinning every inch of the twisting, turning plot, bristling with menace and malice, and with romance only ever a heartbeat away.'
Pam Norfolk Book Reviews
Jane Thynne’s Appointment in Paris (Quercus £20) is a slower-paced, more intricate work, but no less enthralling. The second outing for Stella Fry and Harry Fox, on-off British security service operatives, is set during the UK’s darkest hour, spring 1940. European countries are falling like dominoes to the Nazis. Britain and France are bracing for a likely invasion. A body wearing the uniform of a Luftwaffe officer is found in Trent Park, a stately home converted to a prison for elite German POWs, which has been thoroughly bugged and is a top-secret intelligence-gathering station. Real-life characters such as spymaster Maxwell Knight are woven in with engaging fictional creations. Stella too has developed a sharper, less naive edge, especially once she arrives in Paris. Thynne’s meticulous, evocative period detail — clothes, cigarettes, rations, the smell of the London Underground — is matched by her skill at portraying the web of relationships and human emotions. That mix lifts Appointment in Paris to the first division of second world war espionage novels.
Adam LeBor, Financial Times
'One of my favourite story-tellers is the prolific Jane Thynne, who has established a reputation for her accurate research, the noir atmosphere of the 1930s and 40s, racy plots and seductive characters. Appointment in Paris (Quercus) follows MI5 operative Harry Fox and his colleague, Stella Fry, and builds on Midnight in Vienna when the duo tackled a sinister conspiracy as Britain slid towards war in 1938. In an intelligence thriller worthy of Len Deighton or John le Carré, she paints a convincing picture of the paranoia of wartime London and Paris, leavened with just the right amount of period detail.”
Peter Caddick-Adams, Daily Express
Trent Park, a beautiful “stately home” just outside London, was used to house the more distinguished German prisoners of war from 1939 onwards. They were free to wander about. There was a magnificent library. They had wine, good food, billiards. What these serving Nazi officers did not realise was that every window sill, every washstand, every picture in the dining room, was bugged. Down in the base ment were (mainly) refugees from Hitler, listening in, and reporting back. The intelligence thereby garnered, about strategic plans, was invaluable to the Allies. In Jane Thynne’s gripping, beautifully crafted new novel, Appointment in Paris (Quercus, £20; Tablet price £18), we meet our old friend Stella Fry, who, you will remember, studied modern languages at Oxford and has perfect German. She and her friend the private investigator Harry Fox are drafted in to investigate the murder of a Luftwaffe officer in the grounds of Trent Park. The search takes Stella briefly to Paris, just before the German invasion, where she meets up again with Robert Handel, a dis placed German she had known at Oxford, and who was working at Trent Park until the murder, after which he had done a bunk. Is her old friend the killer? What was the motive? And … who was the murder victim? Not the person whom Stella had thought – nor the person that the real murderer had supposed. It’s such a good novel, and all the period details, while not being heavily thrown at you, are so wonderfully evoked. A five star thriller. I hope that there will be many more. The chemistry between Stella and Fox is terrific – they still do not realise, quite, that they are in love with one another.
A.N.Wilson, The Tablet
