Midnight In Vienna
Set in 1938 in London and Vienna, a tense and atmospheric thriller told against a backdrop of uncertainty and fear as World War Two threatens.
As war looms over Britain and there is talk of gas masks and blackouts, people are jumpy and anxious. Stella Fry, who's been working in Vienna for a Jewish family, returns home with no job and a broken heart. Looking around for work, she answers an advertisement from a famous mystery writer, Hubert Newman, who needs a manuscript typed. She takes on the job but the following morning she is horrified to discover that the writer has suddenly collapsed and died. She is even more shock when, twenty-four hours later, she receives Newman's manuscript and reads the Dedication:
To Stella, spotter of mistakes.
Harry Fox, former Special Branch surveillance operative, now suspended, has his own reasons for being interested in Hubert Newman. He approaches Stella Fry to share his conviction that the writer's death was no accident.
What's more, since she was the last person to see Newman, she could be in danger herself.
As war looms over Britain and there is talk of gas masks and blackouts, people are jumpy and anxious. Stella Fry, who's been working in Vienna for a Jewish family, returns home with no job and a broken heart. Looking around for work, she answers an advertisement from a famous mystery writer, Hubert Newman, who needs a manuscript typed. She takes on the job but the following morning she is horrified to discover that the writer has suddenly collapsed and died. She is even more shock when, twenty-four hours later, she receives Newman's manuscript and reads the Dedication:
To Stella, spotter of mistakes.
Harry Fox, former Special Branch surveillance operative, now suspended, has his own reasons for being interested in Hubert Newman. He approaches Stella Fry to share his conviction that the writer's death was no accident.
What's more, since she was the last person to see Newman, she could be in danger herself.
Reviews
Jane Thynne is one of the handful of women novelists to have absorbed the lessons of John le Carré: a spy novel can also be a love story, a quest for institutional integrity and an exploration of inconvenient truths. The female perspective on all this, unsurprisingly, turns out to be worth having . . . for aficionados of the genre, Thynne has pulled off a new kind of spy novel: feminist, literary, morally challenging and thrilling.
The Spectator
A beautifully crafted historical thriller with charismatic main characters from a gifted writer. More Fox and Fry tales, please.
Irish Independent
Stella is an engaging protagonist with a strong moral core, but all the key characters are sharply drawn in this very enjoyable tale, especially Harry Fox, a tough former Special Branch officer turned private detective — whom Stella finds increasingly alluring.
Financial Times
Evocative in its period detail and gripping in its narrative drive, this is a highly enjoyable novel
The Sunday Times
Thynne's two previous novels were excellent counterfactuals set in a Nazi controlled Britain. Her latest book is set in the real world just before the second world war and is every bit as gripping and surprising. ...the action moves between the elegance of Vienna and the paranoia of London with consummate readability
The Observer
What a winning formula it proves to be as Thynne delivers a gritty, suspense-packed story filled with her trademark richly detailed and exciting world-building, intriguing characters (including a cameo appearance by crime novelist Dorothy L. Sayers), and a growing sense of menace...Thynne has a wonderful way of blending fact and fiction into a story that bristles with menace and evokes time and place with both stunning authenticity and memorable vibrancy whilst dishing up a superb murder mystery sprinkled with tantalising clues and elusive red herrings.
Pam Norfolk, Lancaster Guardian
