Summerland
Joe and Rachel White have a loving but troubled marriage. He is an officer in the British Army, after twenty years still haunted by the horrors of the Great War. She is an experienced Secret Service spy catcher now demoted to desk work. It is England in 1938, General Franco rules in Spain and in the chaos of post-Revolutionary Russia Josef Stalin’s name begins to be heard. But this not the England of the history books. The roads are dominated by electric cars and the skies by huge but vulnerable air ships. The deceased human inhabitants in Summerland may return to the world through the medium of a living host and this is where Rachel White now working alone must look for a traitor. What has a spy to fear if already dead? She is sure Peter Bloom, a brilliant student, who died young, is leader in a group of privileged living spies and she must make herself accepted as one of them. Whether Rachel succeeds or not, a monstrous climax reveals a threat of horrors terrifying beyond all her fears.
This brilliant book is a scientific fantasy which readers unfamiliar with the genre may need to read twice to receive the full impact. It is a parable of England as it might have been but thankfully never was. It is well-written, easy reading, although it is somewhat overloaded with adverbs.
