The eighth outing in this Sparks and Bainbridge series, set in 1947 London, where everyone, especially Iris, is still in recovery from World War II. So is her fellow pre-war Cambridge classmate, Tony Danforth, newly returned from the Far East and soon to be employed at the Foreign Office.
Iris is happy to see him, until the Brigadier raises his dread head yet again and tells Iris that Tony is under suspicion for something or other, unspecified because those MI5ers are always so big with the sharing. He orders Iris and Gwen, her partner in the Right Sort Marriage Bureau, to convince Tony that every FO officer must be in want of a wife so that Tony will sign on as a client. All this of course to be in aid of Iris and Gwen connecting Tony with a woman slash operative slash the new Iris the Brigadier has already chosen.
“What sort of woman attracts him?
“Someone like Miss Sparks,” said Mrs. Bainbridge reluctantly.
“Really?” exclaimed Lowle, looking at Sparks in curiosity and disbelief. “And here I was thinking I’d have to fake upperclass for him. What is it about you that he fancies?”
“My brain,” said Sparks. “Can you fake one of those?”
And we’re off. Iris doesn’t like the idea of betraying a friend, but what if he’s guilty? So she and Gwen go along with it and a honey trap seems well and truly set until Tony goes home from their interview and is blown up and nearly killed by a Molotov cocktail. Who did it? The answer might lie a lot farther back than the war. The Brigadier refuses their offer of assistance but Scotland Yard in the persona of Detective Superintendent Parham is more realistic.
“Be my guests, said Parham. “Let me know if you turn up anything useful.”
“You’re not going to tell us not to get involved?” she asked.
“When has that ever stopped you?”
There are always light moments in the tales of Iris and Gwen but this is a dark chapter in the series, involving brutal inequities in gender and class, harsh realities of war when it is fought beneath the auspices of the Official Secrets Act, and the International Brigade, when so many idealists went to fight in Spain with absolutely no idea of what they were getting into. The conclusion relieves the Crown Prosecution Service of the burden of prosecuting the guilty of past and present both. Damn.
Still looking forward to the next one, though.