In a third outing for Harry Taverner, we find the ‘agent’ for the British Council in Egypt in 1938, this time helping the determined Prim Nevendon to find her father, a theatre owner in Cairo who has gone missing after gunmen targeted the venue; perhaps Archie Nevendon’s secrets are behind his sudden disappearance. As Prim and Harry follow the slightest of leads and in league with a cast of shadowy figures and ne’er-do-wells, they criss-cross Egypt, Palestine and the Sinai Peninsula, edging closer and closer to the truth, but will they find Nevendon before the multitude of enemy forces find him first? Prim is an active participant in the pursuit, a woman with privilege on her side but with a sharp eye for the gaps where truth lies. Taverner is suitably British— James Bond with a pocketbook, if you like—and although he demurs about his actual role, he’s an action hero for the time. Full of atmosphere and historic detail, with a supporting cast of real life figures from all sides of the various political games of the time, Perry gives us a propulsive spy thriller with gentlemanly touches. A worthy addition to historical fiction for the period.

When her estranged father disappears, Prim Nevendon travels to Egypt to try and find him. The whole area is in turmoil as the British are slowly withdrawing and the Balfour partition of Palestine is causing violence between Arabs and Jews. Archibald Nevendon has been caught up in all of this and has gone into hiding. Prim is accompanied by a representative of the British Government but finds help (and betrayal) from other sources. I really liked the setting of this novel as it is very pertinent to the events of modern times, the land grab in Palestine, the emergence of the Jewish Nation of Israel and the looming shadow of the Second World War. So far so good. However I did find it difficult to engage with the story which seems a little amorphous at times and populated by a series of characters that I did not really engage with. Perry is a good writer and I found this one of his weakest in terms of story but the setting more than makes up for it!

I enjoyed escaping into this historical fiction book last week whilst taking some annual leave at home. Prim is heading to Cairo to look for her missing father. Harry also finds himself looking for Archie, to ensure British oil interests aren’t being compromised. The story quickly builds up tension, as Prim finds herself in the midst of a missing person mystery and a murder investigation wondering who she can really trust. I loved how the story brought the area to life – the heat, the dust and the fear of harm facing tourists. The story also looks at the tensions in Palestine in the 1930’s and how this is linked to regular changes in who governs the region. An enjoyable and emotional read, mixing history, crime and family drama. Happy to recommend.

It's 1938, Europe is on the brink of war. Primrose Nevendon lives a rather Bohemian lifestyle as a freelance stage designer with her Italian mother and a collection of artists and philosophers that call themselves (rather grandly) the Bevern Fraternity. Her father Archie left them when she was small and she has barely seen or heard from him since. He is now a director of Anglo-Levantine Oil in Cairo whilst also running his late brother Nim's theatre. Then two Special Branch police officers come calling, Archie has gone missing in Egypt and they are concerned that he might have sold secrets about British oil pipelines and the like to the Germans and/or Italians, especially since Prim herself was briefly a member of the British Union of Fascists until she realised that they were just as bad as the Communists and didn't really want change for the masses - just for the leaders. Prim decides to travel to Egypt to find her father. On the long air journey she meets Harry Taverner, ostensibly with the British Council to bring British arts and science to Egypt, but in reality to babysit Prim and see whether they can find Archie (or if she knows where he is). Also on board is Mike Luzzatto, an American Jew who deals in real estate, although his real motive is buying land for Jewish settlement. When she gets to Cairo, Prim discovers that there are a lot of people looking for Archie, some of them not at all nice. The theatre manager was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered to find some clues as to where he might be - but no-one knows. In their attempts to find Archie, Prim and Harry are drawn into the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews, and both sides' antipathy towards the British. It seems as though Archie may have been trying to play both sides and it spectacularly backfired. The author had clearly done a lot of historical research but honestly most of the time it felt like a bewildering hotchpotch of politics and all I really got out of it was that all sides were pretty unpleasant, prepared to sanction absolutely anything to the cause as collateral damage - that may also have been a product of the times where extremism was rampant across the world. The story itself got subsumed in the politics and felt like a bit of a damp squib, I was left with the feeling of 'so what?'. I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.