Our own home-grown evil, I’m sorry to say. The people who meet with Godfrey are mostly old British Union of Fascists members – Mosley’s lot. The Nordic League, the Link, the Right Club, the Imperial Fascist League, and a hundred smaller factions. ‘I presume you are familiar with the ins and outs of the fifth column, Miss Armstrong?’ ‘Fascist sympathizers, supporters of the enemy sir?’ ‘Exactly. Perry explain’s Juliet’s role in her new position to type the transcripts of secret conversations recorded in an adjacent apartment (Dolphin House in London) between British spy Godfrey Toby and various pro Hitler fascists that pose a potential threat to the outcome of the war. She proves herself capable and is soon promoted to a special operation run by Peregrine (‘call me Perry’) Gibbons. Juliet is just 18 when she is drafted into a clerical position within MI5. The bulk of the action is set in 19, with a brief jump in the first and last chapter to 1981. The genius of Miss Juliet Armstrong’s character was that I could relate to her on many levels, despite her wartime era. The novel covers an aspect of the war I didn’t know anything about the efforts of the intelligence community (itself riddled with double agents), to draw out and obfuscate the activities of home grown fascists and Nazi sympathisers. The plot grabs you unawares, as you get pulled in deeper and deeper to the secretive world of MI5’s work on home soil during the war. Perhaps because they’re distorted reflections and constructs of actual people. The characters are slightly stereotypical to fit the historical slant of the story, but they do seem real.

The dialogue is totally believable and well written. I couldn’t tell fact from fiction, although the author openly states that much of it is fiction, albeit fiction based on facts she accessed from the National Archives. Recently bereaved after the loss of her mother, (she never knew her father), Juliet is alone in the world and ripe for their purposes.Īlthough initially slow burning, it’s intelligent and totally absorbing, with prose to die for (my writer’s radar was in admiration mode). No, Transcription is an intense and highly personal story about a young and idealistic wanna-be spy, Juliet Armstrong, after she is recruited by the shadowy figure of Miles Merton into MI5 during the Second World War. Going back to topic I do seem to have a penchant for spy thrillers, but this is not your typical high octane fodder.

Transcription by Kate Atkinson