WW1 – Judefire33 – The Book Blog

1947. Elinor White, known locally as ‘the White lady’, is living a solitary, quiet life in a grace-and-favour cottage in the Kent countryside. Unbeknownst to her neighbours, she is the veteran of two world wars, a trained killer and a former intelligence agent.

Yet Elinor’s private and seemingly tranquil existence conceals a past trauma that comes to the fore when she is drawn into the predicament of a local man entangled with one of the most dangerous crime families in London.

A treacherous path lies ahead, but it may be one that ultimately leads Elinor to a future unshackled by her own painful history.

Thank you so much to the wonderful Allison & Busby for gifting me a copy of The White Lady.

I’d never heard of Jaqueline Winspear before seeing this book, But I’m so glad I have now!

The White Lady is a riveting and gripping thriller set just after the second world war in the UK, in 1947. We meet Miss Elinor White, who lives a very quiet life in the countryside and keeps herself to herself- her nickname is “The White Lady”. However, she has a fabulous past – a veteran of WW1 and WW2, a trained killer and an ex-spy!

This novel starts with events in 1947 then through Elinor’s eyes we travel back in time to WW1 and her childhood when she was living in Belgium, we find out how Elinor and her family helped to fight the Germans during the first world war years before fleeing to England and then taking up arms again during WW2.

I loved The White Lady, it is written in such a way that it was an easy read. It is a bit like a girl’s own adventure with the events that Elinor White gets up to, but it is written with a nod to history and all those women who worked for or were killed working for the Special Operations Executive during the second world war. Jaqueline Winspear has managed to write a fabulous fast-paced thriller with authentic characters and the plots are brilliant, I could not put it down! The descriptions of the settings during both wars were fantastic and vividly written.

The ending is quite a climax and it’s left in such a way that I hope there will be a follow-up novel!.

A great read, thrilling and addictive – 5 stars from me.

Jacqueline Winspear is the creator of the New York Times and National Bestselling series featuring psychologist and investigator, Maisie Dobbs. Her first novel – Maisie Dobbs – received numerous awards nominations, including the Edgar Award for Best Novel and the Agatha Award for Best First Novel. It was a New York Times Notable Book and a Publisher’s Weekly Top Ten Pick.“ Jacqueline’s “standalone” novel set in WW1, The Care and Management of Lies, was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in 2015. In 2019 The American Agent, her 16th novel, was published, along with a non-fiction book based upon the Maisie Dobbs’ series, What Would Maisie Do? Originally from the UK, Jacqueline now lives in northern California.

You can follow Jaqueline Winspear on her FACEBOOK page

Jaqueline Winspear has her own website HERE

You can Pre-order The White Lady HERE

THE GUNS ARE SILENT. THE DEAD ARE NOT.

1919. On the desolate battlefields of northern France, the guns of the Great War are silent. Special battalions now face the dangerous task of gathering up the dead for mass burial.

Captain Mackenzie, a survivor of the war, cannot yet bring himself to go home. First he must see that his fallen comrades are recovered and laid to rest. His task is upended when a gruesome discovery is made beneath the ruins of a German strongpoint.

Amy Vanneck’s fiancé is one soldier lost amongst many, but she cannot accept that his body may never be found. She heads to France, determined to discover what became of the man she loved.

It soon becomes clear that what Mackenzie has uncovered is a war crime of inhuman savagery. As the dark truth leaches out, both he and Amy are drawn into the hunt for a psychopath, one for whom the atrocity at Two Storm Wood is not an end, but a beginning.

I really like novels that are set during WW1 or WW2 so I was excited to be able to start Two Storm Wood, especially as it’s part of my Backlog!

From the outset this book grabbed me, it’s a love story, a tragedy, a creepy thriller. The two main characters Amy Vanneck and her fiancé Edward Haslam are brought to life so expertly and the attention to detail in describing how they look and their inner minds, is frankly, amazing. The setting is France in 1919 but we also travel back in time and revisit the death fields of war, the descriptions of which are SO realistic, the violence of war is put on paper so skilfully by Philip Gray, and the mental torture that affected every soldier is laid bare here.

The story is vast and almost cinematic in nature as we travel through the abandoned battlefields with Amy in search of her missing fiancé, it is very clear to me that Philip did a ton of research into WW1 and this makes Two Storm Wood such an authentic historical thriller. The battle scenes are almost TOO well described!

It’s almost a strange thing to say, but I loved the storyline of Two Storm Wood, I mean strange in that, some of it is so visceral in its depictions of war, which we know is horrific, but it is not there for glorification, Two Storm Wood just balances love and horror so well. The thrilling conclusion had me literally with my jaw dropping!

I love that Two Storm Wood is almost a love letter to Philip’s Grandfather, who kept records and maps during his time fighting in WW1 ( for more information on this head to Philip’s website) All in all this is a fabulous novel, if you like historical thrillers with a creepy edge, then Two Storm Wood is for you!

A 4 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ read!