Picking up the scintillating spy story that began with series opener The Ministry of Unladylike Activity, Robin Stevens’ The Body in the Blitz is nothing but sparky and slickly plotted. A blitz-time blast of a book that’ll have fans of detective fiction reading under the covers, set on figuring out whodunnit for themselves.
It’s 1941 the Ministry of Unladylike Activity is training up children as spies. Fresh from uncovering a Nazi spy and solving a murder, May, Nuala and Eric are summoned to London by May’s older sister, Hazel. Nuala is thrilled to be travelling to the capital, “to help with spy stuff. There won’t be any murders waiting for us this time.” Famous last words, of course, for it’s not long before a body is found in a bombed-out house on the trio’s street.
As a pulse-quickening, perilous spy story with French connections unfolds, The Body in the Blitz blazes with secrets, suspicion and the exhilaration of solving a high-stakes case.
The Ministry of Unladylike Activity 2: The Body in the Blitz Synopsis
The second thrilling and unputdownable mystery starring a new generation of the Detective Society, from the million-copy-bestselling author of Murder Most Unladylike: Robin Stevens.
March 1941. Britain is at war, and a secret agency called the Ministry of Unladylike Activity is training up children as spies - because grown-ups always underestimate them. Enter May, Eric and Nuala: courageous, smart, and the Ministry's newest recruits. May's big sister Hazel has arranged for them to stay on a quiet street close to the Ministry, home to an unlikely collection of people thrown together by the war. And it is in the basement of the bombed-out house at the end of that street that they discover something mysterious. Something that was not there when the Blitz wreckage was first combed through. Something that has been placed there recently. A body...
Could this be the missing Ministry spy that Daisy Wells is on a dangerous mission in France to find? Or could it be someone else - someone a resident of the street wanted silenced . . . ?
Watch the Robin Stevens introduce the series here:
Praise for The Ministry of Unladylike Activity series:
'As funny, clever, and warm as we've come to expect from Robin Stevens, The Ministry of Unladylike Activity is such a delight' - Louise O'Neill
'Robin Stevens is Agatha Christie for children: her books have all the rich satisfactions, all the twists and pleasures and the enormous delights of instant mystery classics. I am always hungry for the next one' - Katherine Rundell
Author
About Robin Stevens
Robin was born in California and grew up in an Oxford college, across the road from the house where Alice in Wonderland lived. When she was twelve, her father handed her a copy of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and she realised that she wanted to be either Hercule Poirot or Agatha Christie when she grew up. She spent her teenage years at Cheltenham Ladies' College, reading a lot of murder mysteries and hoping that she'd get the chance to do some detecting herself (she didn't). She went to university, where she studied crime fiction, and then worked at a children's publisher.
Robin is now a full-time author who lives in Oxford with her husband and her pet bearded dragon, Watson. She is the author of the bestselling, awardwinning Murder Most Unladylike series and The Guggenheim Mystery.
