A Traitor in Whitehall by Julia Kelly ~ A Review

by Susan Roberts

The Cabinet War Rooms in  London were occupied by the most important government officials and Prime Minister Winston Churchill during WWII and became the nerve center of Britain's war machine.   I have visited the war rooms and it was very interesting to see the small well-fortified rooms where so many of the important decisions were made.  A Traitor in Whitehall involves a murder and information that is being sold to the Germans from the War Rooms.

Amazon affiliate links are used on this site. A free book was provided for an honest review.

October 2023; Minotaur Books;  978-1250865489
audio, ebook, print (288 pages); WWII mystery

Evelyne is working at a munitions factory in London when she is recruited to be a typist in the War Rooms.  She's a well-written character who always has a book - usually a mystery - in her hands and doesn't appreciate being made to feel 'less than' by the men she encounters at her job.  She has a past that was well known throughout the land due to a very public custody fight between her Parisian mother and her jet-set English father and was referred to as the Parisian orphan.  It's a nickname that people she meets still remember and even though she has put her past behind her, people still bring it up.  Just as she's getting used to her new job in the typing pool, she discovers the body of one of the other typists dead from a knife in her throat.  She also finds out that there is a mole working in the War Rooms that is passing critical information to the enemy.

She's pretty feisty and starts asking questions to the point that the man investigating the security leaks agrees to let her work with him.  She and David make a good team and together work on both the murder and the security breach.  She's great because if he ever tries to treat her as 'just a woman' she comes back at him with a reminder of how crucial she is to their investigation.

So we have Evelyne with a past that everyone knows about, an addiction to mystery stories and a growing attraction to David, working to catch a killer and a traitor and sometimes putting her own life in danger.

She's a great character and I loved her inquisitive mind and the fact that she always has a book close at hand.

The storyline is dramatic and moves along at a good pace.  There are several suspects and finding out who the bad guy (s) are kept me guessing until the end.

I was quite excited when I found out that this is the first book in a new series called Persian Orphan.  Evelyne and David are both characters that I want to read more about and to follow their exploits during wartime in England.  I hope it isn't too long of a wait for book 2!        

Buy A Traitor in Whitehall at Amazon

Susan Roberts grew up in Michigan but loves the laid-back life at her home in the Piedmont area of North Carolina where she is two hours from the beach to the east and the mountains in the west.  She reads almost anything but her favorite genres are Southern Fiction and Historical Fiction.   

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