Authors: Laura Wilson
Stratton's War (67 page)
He witnesses the clear boundaries of respectability beginning to blur during the war, and realises that they can never be re-drawn with the same degree of clarity.
Stratton lives in Tottenham, north-east London, in the same road in which my mother grew up with her parents, surrounded by an extended family of aunts, uncles and cousins. I am grateful to Mum for providing me with a detailed ground plan of her family’s home and information about the surrounding area, which was far more rural before the war than it is now. Tottenham, I’m sure, has its charms; however, in choosing the locations for Stratton and Diana’s childhood homes, I was unable to resist the temptation to plump for attractive and - for me - accessible parts of England (Devon and the Cotswolds respectively), in case I have to visit them for research purposes in the future.
Diana proved more difficult than Stratton to get right, mainly because women like her - educated only for marriage - no longer exist. There was no expectation that someone like Diana would ever have to earn her own living, or do anything except be the ornamental and gracious chatelaine of a grand house and the mother of ‘the heir and the spare’ and possibly a couple of girls as well (who would, immediately after birth, be handed over to a nurse, and not require much of her time thereafter). Together with the social and sexual mores of the age this means that, by modern standards, she may appear naïve and ineffectual but her social status, charm and innate, though untrained, intelligence, make her - as was the case with Joan Miller (see page 448) - a good choice for wartime work in the Security Services.
STRATTON’S NEXT CASE
The second book in the series,
An Empty Death
, will be published in summer 2009. It is set in 1944. After almost five years of conflict, London’s exhausted inhabitants are living hand to mouth in a world of dust and dereliction, and war-weary DI Stratton is no exception. After a long night helping to dig a bomb victim out of rubble, he is called upon to investigate the case of a dead doctor, found in suspicious circumstances. Was it an affair turned fatally sour, revenge for a lethal misdiagnosis, or, despite appearances, simply an unfortunate accident? Or, as Stratton begins to suspect, is there someone at the hospital who is not what he appears to be and will go to any lengths to protect his fake persona? Meanwhile, there is friction at home - the bomb victim saved by Stratton, who has been taken in by his family because she has none of her own, claims that her soldier husband is an imposter and wants nothing to do with him. Is she deluded, or is
he
a fraud, too? As Stratton and his wife Jenny argue, things become increasingly fraught, but he has no idea that the consequences might be fatal . . .
An Empty Death
, will be published in summer 2009. It is set in 1944. After almost five years of conflict, London’s exhausted inhabitants are living hand to mouth in a world of dust and dereliction, and war-weary DI Stratton is no exception. After a long night helping to dig a bomb victim out of rubble, he is called upon to investigate the case of a dead doctor, found in suspicious circumstances. Was it an affair turned fatally sour, revenge for a lethal misdiagnosis, or, despite appearances, simply an unfortunate accident? Or, as Stratton begins to suspect, is there someone at the hospital who is not what he appears to be and will go to any lengths to protect his fake persona? Meanwhile, there is friction at home - the bomb victim saved by Stratton, who has been taken in by his family because she has none of her own, claims that her soldier husband is an imposter and wants nothing to do with him. Is she deluded, or is
he
a fraud, too? As Stratton and his wife Jenny argue, things become increasingly fraught, but he has no idea that the consequences might be fatal . . .
Other books
Poker Night by Dusty Miller
A Latent Dark by Martin Kee
The Playground by Julia Kelly
The Templar Archive by James Becker
Palace of Spies by Sarah Zettel
Just Say Yes (Just Say Yes #2) by Jen Andrews
Charm City (The Demon Whisperer Book 1) by Ash Krafton
The Cosmic Landscape by Leonard Susskind
To Wed a Wicked Prince by Jane Feather
Fired Up by Mary Connealy