The jewel in the crown in this case is not the Crown Jewels, although the Crown Jewels play their part as World War II opens in this novel.
No, the jewel in the crown of England in this case is one Caitrin Colline, Welsh and one of the first members of Unit 512, a tippety-top secret organization which recruits only the best and most capable women available for whatever needs doing to win the war. In this case Winston Churchill decides that what needs doing is for Caitrin to pretend to be married to Hector, Lord Marlton (himself an agent of another secret agency) as they drive Britain’s Crown Jewels to a submarine in Scotland for transportation to Canada, there to sit out the war in safety.
Or so he says. They are also ferreting out spies and traitors among Britain’s nobility along their route, as some members of said nobility lean very eastward in their preferences and fully expect that nice Hitler fellow not to invade and even if he does not to dispossess any lords and ladies of their ancestral mansions.
They would do no such thing. Hitler doesn’t want to fight us; we’re brothers. We negotiate peace; he leaves us alone and turns to fight the socialists and the Russian Bolsheviks in the east. We should help him with that before they come here in a great ugly tide…Instead of shooting each other, we English should be building bridges with the Germans, They are our true brothers, not the French or the Poles.
Caitrin, as beautiful as she is intelligent, is a wee tad brighter than that and a red hot Socialist besides.
“…after the war, the aristocracy should be, will be, dismantled and the country estates divided up for the people. We will bring an end to centuries of inbred titled parasites doing nothing to validate their existence but feed off the people.”
All, and you knew this was coming, does not go as planned on Caitrin and Hector’s honeymoon trip, or at least not as they were told it was planned, and that’s all I’ll say about that so I don’t spoil. Hector is almost as much fun and almost as smart at Caitrin and together they’re more fun to hang out with than the entire cast of Monty Python. I’ve already ordered the second book in the series.
Book Review Monday Chatter David Lewis The Jewel in the Crown