Synopsis
Lord Edward Corinth embarks on his most important investigation.
It is 1939 and it is clear that Britain will soon be at war and
MI5 has learnt that an enemy agent has been dispatched to England
to assassinate Winston Churchill. The assassin’s identity
is unknown and Lord Edward, pursuing one line of enquiry, goes to
Cliveden, the Astors' country house in Buckinghamshire.
Verity Browne is also at Cliveden, much as she despises the ‘Cliveden
Set’. She has been ordered by her superiors in the Communist
Party to get as close as possible to one of the Astor’s guests,
Joesph Kennedy, the American Ambassador in the UK. And when the
ambassador’s sons Joe and Jack Kennedy discover the body of
a man in Cliveden’s grounds, Verity is dismayed to recognize
the dead man as a former journalistic colleague from the civil war
which still rages in Spain.
The race against time to identify Churchill’s would-be assassin
and the murderer of Verity’s friend takes the intrepid duo
to Switzerland and a nail-biting climax on St Moritz’s icy
Cresta Run.
Reviews
Praise for David Roberts' Previous Novels
Peter James
A gripping, richly satisfying whodunit with finely observed characters,
sparkling with insouciance and stinging menace.
Charles Osborne, author of The Life and Crimes of Agatha
Christie
A classic murder mystery with as complex a plot as one could hope
for and a most engaging pair of amateur sleuths.
Guardian
This is a witty and meticulous recreation of the class- ridden middle
England of the 1930s… a perfect example of golden-age mystery
traditions with the cobwebs swept away.
Michael Dobbs
The plot is both intricate and enthralling, like Poirot on the high
seas, and lovingly recorded by an author with a meticulous eye and
a huge sense of fun.
More on David Roberts:
Read David Roberts's biography
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