Hope for the Innocent by Caroline Stapleford is advertised as the first in a series. Unfortunately that wasn’t completely true as it appears that this book is the first of an offshoot series by the same author from a set of books featuring the main character’s mother. This didn’t affect the plot too much except with relation to one character who seems to have been influential in the previous books – the significance of some of what he said and did wasn’t completely clear to me.
Hope is a young woman from a wealthy family coming out in society just before WW2. The prospect of war hangs over the book. Hope’s best friend Bernie is the daughter of the American Ambassador and together they attend a social event and befriend another young woman who then disappears. Hope and Bernie decide to investigate, which they do with the help of a lower-class Londoner whose motivations are not always entirely clear.
Hope is a sensible young woman who has studied at Oxford. She’s a clear thinker and prepared to have a go at most things. Her friend Bernie is a bit sillier but together they get involved in kidnappings, blackmail, love affairs, drugs, gangs and fascist demonstrations. At times the lives of the characters are in danger.
This is a good enough historical crime novel in the vein of the Daisy Dalrymple books by Carola Dunn (see here for a review), the Kate Shackleton books by Frances Brody (see here) and the Maisie Dobbs books by Jacqueline Winspear which are also set in this time period (see here). I would, however, advise any new reader to start with the previous series in order to understand all of the nuances of this story.
Anne Is Reading 