About Deadly Travel
Deadly Travel: A World War II Mystery (The Deadly Series)
Historical Cozy Mystery 5th in Series
Publisher: JDP Press (September 28, 2020)
Number of Pages 320 Digital ASIN: B08F6BW1WV
Travel to Berlin in 1939 is treacherous. Carrying out two clandestine missions in the enemy capital could prove deadly.
When a Quaker Kindertransport chaperone is murdered in the East End of London, Britain’s counterintelligence spymaster tasks Olivia Denis to join the group rescuing children from Nazi Germany. Olivia must find not only a killer, but a traitor relaying sensitive material to the enemy.
Once they reach Berlin, Olivia discovers she must rescue the family of an imprisoned British spy before she leaves the next day. An attack convinces Olivia the family’s two young sons are in grave danger, but where to hide them?
Can she protect the boys before they become the traitor’s next victims?
Deadly Travel, Book Five of the Deadly series, is for fans of World War II era spy thrillers and classical cozy mysteries, of intrepid lady sleuths with spunk and smarts. No explicit cursing, sex, or violence.
Continue your journey today into Olivia’s world of intrigue in London in the days leading up to war.
Character Guest Post
Hello. I’m Olivia Denis, and Kate Parker has been writing stories about my life ever since I was widowed at the age of twenty-five.
Reggie was a nice man, very quiet and private, and fifteen years my senior, with an important post in the Foreign Office where my father also worked. I thought I loved him, and I suppose I did, especially since he made possible my escape from my father.
My father and I have argued since I was old enough to know his ideas for me didn’t match what I wanted out of life. I wanted to be independent, to find my own path in life, or as much as a girl can after World War I in England. I think if my mother had lived, he’d have been a different kind of father, leaving my rearing to her. As she died when I was six, he found himself saddled with a task he’d never planned on and expectations I would never meet.
Reggie Denis took me away from all that, and I will forever be grateful to him for his kindness in rescuing me and the three years we had together. Three years when I began to find myself, with Reggie blocking my father’s constant attempts to turn me into someone I definitely wasn’t.
When Reggie was murdered, I had one goal in sight. Find out who killed this lovely man. Scotland Yard declared it suicide, and the scene was carefully set. Fortunately, the murderer wasn’t observant, and I could see at an instant that it was physically impossible for Reggie to have killed himself that way.
Once the rent on the flat came due, I was left with two options. Find a job that would pay for my slightly expensive, but not extravagant, lifestyle, or move home to my father’s house. Luck was with me. My best friend since school was the only child of a newspaper baron. I talked to my friend, she talked to her father, and I had an interview in days.
Her father, and my future boss, was a bit of a maverick. A poor boy growing up in Victorian Newcastle, he broke away and made himself into the publisher of one of the biggest and most powerful newspapers in London. His wife, my friend’s mother, had died in the influenza epidemic as my mother had, but unlike my mother, his wife was a German Jew and a scientist.
My soon-to-be boss put me on the staff of the women’s and society pages at an exorbitant salary. A salary that guaranteed I would carry out various trips for him to Nazi Germany to help his wife’s family escape the Nazis. This led to me carrying out certain investigations for the betterment of the newspaper and the government.
By the time we reach early 1939 and Deadly Travel, my boss is finding himself in a position where he has to loan me out to the head of the British counterintelligence service. Since he’s willing to continue paying my salary, I find I can’t argue about a brief reassignment.
About Kate Parker
Kate Parker caught the reading bug early, and the writing bug soon followed. She’s always lived in a house surrounded by books and dust bunnies. After spending a dozen years in North Carolina, she moved to Colorado. The Rocky Mountains are beautiful, but she’d developed a love of wide rivers, warmer and wetter weather, and fast-growing greenery that sent her hurrying back to North Carolina.
Deadly Travel is the fifth book in the Deadly Series, and Kate’s plan is to follow it quickly with Deadly Darkness, both set in 1939 in the days leading up to war. There are at least three more of the Deadly Series coming that will bring the beginning of the war to Olivia’s doorstep. Kate reports that she is having fun creating new stories to entertain readers and chaos to challenge her characters.
Sounds like a great cozy.
ReplyDeleteSounds good, I like the cover.
ReplyDeleteLove reading historical mysteries. Sounds like a book I would enjoy reading.
ReplyDeletethis sounds really good, thanks for sharing
ReplyDelete