
Like Pamela, he realizes that you don’t have to be a soldier on the front line to be doing your patriotic duty.īack home at Farleigh Place, Pamela’s twelve-year-old sister, Phoebe, is saved from riding over the body of a dead soldier by the quick-thinking and actions of Alfie, the gamekeeper’s boy. He’s been recruited by MI5 and finally feels he’s making a difference in the war effort. The war has finally come home to her.Īs it has for Ben. Pamela is horribly conscious of the importance of her job and that a failure to translate or a mistranslation might mean hundreds of lives lost. As it turns out, Pamela, who speaks excellent German, has been recruited to translate intercepted German messages. Nor prone to hysterics.” And also those who are educated and will be patriotic and loyal. Trixie says, “He’s looking for girls like us. In the meantime, a friend from her London début days approaches Pamela to work for a ‘hush-hush’ government department. People look up to us, and we have an obligation to show them how it’s done.” Never let anyone see you are upset or afraid. Pamela was devastated, but follows her father’s aristocratic creed:


It’s now been almost a year that he’s been stuck in a stalag luft. However, on one such mission he’s shot down and captured by the Germans. Unfortunately, Jeremy’s rash joyride ends in a crash that permanently damages not just Ben’s leg, but also his hopes for entering the RAF and doing his duty by his country.įast forward two years, and Jeremy’s thriving in the RAF and has garnered honors for his daredevil forays into enemy territory. Jeremy’s dramatic landing of his plane next to the cricket pitch results in his offering Ben his first ride in an airplane. He has been in love with her since they were children, but her preference is for their third playmate, Jeremy Prescott, the only son of London financier, Sir William Prescott. As Ben Cresswell, the vicar’s son, waits for his turn to bat, Lady Pamela Sutton, the third daughter of the Earl of Westerham, approaches him, pleasing Ben no end. The book opens shortly before Britain’s declaration of war on Germany with a cricket match in progress on the village green of Elmsleigh in Kent. She’s really a master of the quiet mystery. Bowen delivers on the promise of the premise with an exciting story. Simply knowing this sold me on the book, and Ms. In Farleigh Field is a standalone murder mystery with a patina of romance set in Kent involving MI5 operatives and Bletchley Park decoders during World War II.
