Juliet is just eighteen years old when she is recruited by MI5 to transcribe the meetings of British citizens who are sympathetic to the Nazi cause. It’s no small feat – the work is tedious, terrifying and requires Juliet to shift between various names and personae to protect her identity. She becomes a master of deception and acutely aware of just how many webs of lies are being spun around her. One thing Juliet knows for certain: no one is who or what they seem.
Ten years later, Juliet is a producer at the BBC, a far cry from her days as a recruited spy. Her job now is to create programming about the past for children – versions of history that are informed more by nostalgic ideals than concrete fact. The irony isn’t lost on her: as a spy her job was to uncover the truth; at the BBC, her job is to mask it.
Juliet fears that her life has run its course, that she is fated to become a lonely spinster. But this fear is quickly eradicated when she is confronted by figures from her past, and realises that you never truly escape the MI5. Although a different war is now being fought on a different battleground, Juliet again finds herself under threat. It is not long before she realises that there are consequences for every action, and truth behind every lie.
Warren Book Club 