Okewood of the Secret Service

Arthur Mackwayte was once the darling of London's music halls, but the war has dimmed his spotlight. When he answers an urgent call to fill in at the Palaceum Theatre, he returns home with his daughter Barbara to find a body in his own house and a web of impossible secrets closing around them. The murdered man carries documents that could shake the foundations of British intelligence, and the elegant dancer Nur-el-Din, whose performances have captivated the city, seems to weave through the tragedy like smoke. As father and daughter race through the gaslit shadows of wartime London, they discover that the stage is not the only place where illusions are performed, and that some secrets die with their keepers only after they've killed. Valentine Williams delivers a propulsive espionage thriller that captures the paranoid atmosphere of 1919, when the Great War had ended but its shadows had not, and the world wondered which enemies had truly been defeated.