IN FARLEIGH FIELD by Rhys Bowen, Lake Union Publishing.

Sometimes you just want a ripping thriller set in a country house in World War II. One with a dead German spy, debutantes turned Bletchley

Park decoders, swashbuckling pilots and precocious evacuee children. In Farleigh

Field has everything for a suspenseful romp through the home front, and while it occasionally verges on cliché, it has plenty of heart. The men exclaim “wizard”, and the young women are given to saying “golly”, but it’s clear they’re living in grim and frightening times. They’re a generation that has to grow up quickly, people who knew everyone had to “do their bit” and work together if they were going to survive. Rhys Bowen writes with verve and sweeps you towards a carefully plotted climax that could change the war – where else but at a garden party.