First published 2023
Elinor White lives quietly in a Kent village in 1947, hiding her deadly wartime past from curious neighbors. The forty-one-year-old former operative occupies a grace and favor property, awarded for secret services to the Crown that nearly destroyed her. When young farmworker Jim Mackie arrives with his wife Rose and daughter Susie, Elinor's carefully constructed isolation begins to crack. Susie's bright eyes remind Elinor of her darkest wartime memories, while Jim carries secrets of his own. The powerful Mackie crime family soon demands Jim's return for a dangerous job, threatening the peaceful family that has begun to matter to Elinor. She must choose between the anonymity she desperately protects and using her lethal skills to shield her neighbors. As Elinor investigates the crime family's reach, she discovers corruption stretching from Scotland Yard to the highest government levels. Former colleagues who know about her 1944 breakdown and suicide attempt become pawns in a larger conspiracy. To save the Mackies and free herself from the past, Elinor will hold a gun to a crime lord's head and face the truth she has spent years avoiding.
Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, mystery, crime
Vibes: dark, emotional, suspenseful
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family
Setting: Kent, Scotland Yard
Period: 1944, 1947
321 pages · Hardcover · Harper
Content warnings: violence