The year is 1934. Photographer Elena Standish is visiting Washington, DC, for the first time, having come with her parents from England to attend a party celebrating her grandparents' sixtieth wedding anniversary. Tragedy strikes: a woman is run down by a car. With startling speed, Elena's grandfather is arrested for murder. But there is much more to the story. The dead woman was an agent for MI6, the British intelligence agency--as is Elena herself, who has used her cover as a photographer to carry out missions in two previous novels, Death in Focus (2019) and A Question of Betrayal (2020). Determine to find the truth behind the woman's murder, Elena soon discovers that she might not like where the search leads her. A good historical mystery is like a balancing act--too little period detail and the story feels fuzzy, too much and it gets bogged down--and Perry, who has also written the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt and the William Monk series, gets the balance just right. It would be easy to believe that Elena Standish really did exist, and that the books are actual biographical stories. Perry proves once again why she is among the top writers of historical mysteries.

Bestseller Perry's routine third novel featuring British photographer-turned-spy Elena Standish (after 2020's A Question of Betrayal) takes Elena to Washington, D.C., in 1934 to visit her grandparents, Dorothy and Wyatt Baylor, who are celebrating their 60th anniversary with a fancy party. At the party, Standish befriends Lila Worth, an Austrian whose scientist husband's research has been financed by Wyatt. During the party, someone runs over Lila in the parking lot, killing her. Though Elena initially accepts the theory that Lila interrupted a car theft, Elena's MI6 handler reveals that Lila was an operative engaged in stopping valuable scientific information reaching Germany--which suggests Lila was murdered. Elena's investigation becomes personal once Wyatt is charged with the crime because bloodstains are found on his car, a development her grandfather, a presidential adviser, suspects is a politically motivated frame. Some less than persuasive details, such as FDR attending the party without a Secret Service escort, impede full suspension of disbelief. Maisie Dobbs fans interested in a similar but less-developed protagonist may be satisfied. Agent: Donald Maass, Donald Maass Literary. (Sept.)