A Very Personal Invasion
(2023)(The second book in the Esther and the Professor Mystery series)
A novel by Tia Brown
It’s autumn 1940 and Esther Graham and Professor James Lomax are combining working at a secret establishment on the Dorset coast with driving a WVS canteen van two evenings a week to take food and drinks to the men who are manning the anti-aircraft batteries and working down on Poole Quay.
Professor Lomax bitterly resents the tuberculosis that means that he’s not fit enough to fight, and Esther is struggling to come to terms with her husband’s infidelity and the baby who may or may not be his daughter by the traitor who blackmailed him. So maybe it’s not surprising that she’s nothing like as delighted as her son is to hear that her husband is coming home on leave.
He insists on taking her away for a night at a posh Bournemouth hotel, where he’s offered some beautiful second-hand jewellery. Esther doesn’t want it, because the Professor’s cousin, the enigmatic spy Kit Carmichael has asked them to keep a look out for jewellery that’s been looted from bombed houses and stripped from dead and dying women.
Esther is in trouble in just about every possible way while she tries to juggle loyalties, air raids, being kidnapped and she and the Professor having to rescue her husband and Kit Carmichael while foiling a plot to infiltrate agents into Britain. Old enemies and new friends complicate matters, but nothing is as complex as the relationship between her and Professor Lomax. Can she love two very different men in very different ways? What does she want to do? Does she have a choice? All she can be sure of is that this is a very personal invasion.
Genre: Thriller
Professor Lomax bitterly resents the tuberculosis that means that he’s not fit enough to fight, and Esther is struggling to come to terms with her husband’s infidelity and the baby who may or may not be his daughter by the traitor who blackmailed him. So maybe it’s not surprising that she’s nothing like as delighted as her son is to hear that her husband is coming home on leave.
He insists on taking her away for a night at a posh Bournemouth hotel, where he’s offered some beautiful second-hand jewellery. Esther doesn’t want it, because the Professor’s cousin, the enigmatic spy Kit Carmichael has asked them to keep a look out for jewellery that’s been looted from bombed houses and stripped from dead and dying women.
Esther is in trouble in just about every possible way while she tries to juggle loyalties, air raids, being kidnapped and she and the Professor having to rescue her husband and Kit Carmichael while foiling a plot to infiltrate agents into Britain. Old enemies and new friends complicate matters, but nothing is as complex as the relationship between her and Professor Lomax. Can she love two very different men in very different ways? What does she want to do? Does she have a choice? All she can be sure of is that this is a very personal invasion.
Genre: Thriller
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