The Second Traitor - Alex Gerlis

 I have read two of Gerlis's Richard Price thrillers recently.   I enjoyed both with reservations; they seemed unusually slow to get off the ground but once they did, they rattled along and ended eminently satisfactorily.   The Second Traitor, which must be one of his latest, explores the same World War II territory, but is otherwise entirely different, starting with a bang and never really letting up.

It's the second of Gerlis's Double Agent series and is exactly that.   Everyone is, or could be, a double agent.  British, German, Russian - even Irish and Pro-Nazi British: no one's status is entirely clear.   Does it matter that I haven't read the first in the series?   Not one jot, which is how it should be.   Anything we need to know is revealed over the course of the book whilst the main issue (who, if anyone, is our 'good guy'?) is left wide open.

It seems that our hero is Charles Cooper, aka Christopher Shaw and/or Malcolm Lyle, who is definitely a double, known to the Russians as 'Bertie'.   The time is 1940 and the Russians have a non-aggression pact with Hitler - which shouldn't be taken to mean they are also at war with Britain.   Their status, like Cooper's, is best described as equivocal.   They are, however, keen to ensure that Britain resists any German invasion, otherwise Stalin believes Hitler will turn his empire-building east.   So the NKVD feeds Cooper with information he can pass on to his branch of MI6, the Invasion Warning Sub-Committee.   Meanwhile the Sub-Committee is sheilding Cooper from Murray, who is going round killing anyone who might betray the pro-Nazi Group.   Meanwhile MI6 is keen to identify the other Soviet Agent they know by codename, Archie.   We encounter Archie at intervals through the complex story, merrily killing and betraying agents in the field, whilst getting no clue to his (or her) identity.

The plot is extremely complex.  The timeline is very compressed - the summer of 1940 - but flicks back and forth constantly.   Gerlis makes it so deliberately.   After all, a spider's web is anything but a straight line.   I really enjoyed The Second Traitor and can't wait to get hold of the rest of the series.

The Secret Rooms - Catherine Bailey

This is a captivating and unusual book. Bailey was granted access to the extensive archive of the Manners family, kept at Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire, home of the Duke of Rutland. Her aim was to research a book on the men of the Belvoir Estate during World War I. The current duke's great grandfather, Henry, had been a noted recruiter of volunteers for the Leicestershire Tigers. He had even offered to pay their usual wages while they were away.

On arrival she discovered the mystery of the secret rooms. This is where Henry's son John, the ninth duke had died in April 1940, aged only 53. More than that, he had locked himself in these humble 'business' rooms - excluding his family and some of the best doctors in the land - in order to work on the vast family archive. Moreover, it wasn't just the Manners papers that were stored there in 1940. The ninth duke had campaigned hard to ensure that huge chunks of the National Archive were secretly moved to Belvoir for safe keeping.

John himself had served in the First War. His father Henry had boasted that his own son - his only remaining son - was serving at the Front like the humblest farm hand. But Bailey soon discovered that the archives had been systematically edited - filleted by John - to remove all mention of certain periods in his life, including the latter part of his war service. Why? And who on Earth broke into the sealed rooms three nights after John's death?

As I say, it is a compelling story of arrogance, cowardice, bereavement and entitlement. Bailey builds the key characters as well as any novelist. Yet she is equally diligent in recording the problems of archival research. She answers the questions she set herself. Some solutions are sad, others downright extraordinary. She doesn't answer the one question I have always had about this truly ghastly family. How did they become dukes in the first place? They weren't warlords, nor royal by-blows. Sure, they owned and amassed inordinate land banks but so did many other families who came over with the Conqueror, and none of them became dukes. Other than pile up - and later lose - unimaginable fortunes, what did any of them ever do?