Published by Sapere Books,
31 March 2025.
ISBN: 979-0-831160997-5 (PB)
Away from her Charles Dickens Investigations series, J.C.
Briggs appears to be fascinated by crumbling piles in NW England. Following The Legacy of Foulstone Manor and The Inheritors of Moonlyght Tower (both
of which are stand-alones I have reviewed enthusiastically for Mystery People), she has now turned her attention
to Treasonfield House. As with Foulstone
and Moonlyght, the Great War is a
major focus, this time with espionage to the fore (don’t be fooled by the name
Treasonfield – it has nothing to do with what you may think, as is explained to
the reader early on).
In 1952 Marie has come back to the
ruins of Treasonfield to answer the summons of her dying Aunt Giselle. Marie had
been taken in at the house by her aunt as a child but never understood why she
was treated so coldly. She consequently had a lonely and unhappy childhood
until sent to boarding school. Marie has made her own life and now has a happy
marriage and family in London. When she arrives at Treasonfield Marie is told
by kindly Uncle Ned (not Giselle’s husband) that Giselle is dead. She hopes to
discover from him why Giselle was so distant to her. Why did Giselle want to
see her? To begin with, though, she finds that Uncle Ned was in the
intelligence services during the Great War and in time will tell her more than
she can imagine about Treasonfield and its past inhabitants.
To start these disclosures the
reader is soon taken back to the battlefields of northern France in 1918. Captain
Matthew Riviere, himself inextricably linked to Treasonfield, has been badly
injured at the same time as he imagines that he has seen someone of German
lineage from his past who also has connections to Treasonfield. Riviere’s
girlfriend, Claire Mallory, is an ambulance driver in the area. When Riviere
tells the authorities about whom he thinks he has seen, his suspicions are
confirmed by the identification of a body. Riviere’s injuries are a good screen
for him to be temporarily transferred to intelligence duties and sent to
Treasonfield, ostensibly to convalesce. Because of the information Riviere has
shared, Mallory is also recruited and sent to Geneva to see if certain people
are there. ‘Trust no one’, she is told.
At Treasonfield Riviere finds a
body. Suicide or murder? He suspects that the house is being watched. In Geneva
Mallory soon comes across people from her past and she becomes embroiled in the
dangerous world of spies - or are they double agents? She finds a scrap of
paper which seems to hold potentially important information. Immediately she
unintentionally kills someone whilst defending herself. Mallory is now pursued
and takes refuge with a woman who works in a cafe known to be the haunt of
agents and ne’er do wells. This woman has her own reasons for hating the
Germans and shows herself more than ready to take lives. More deaths occur.
Mallory manages to pass on her information, and a scheme of potential
war-changing significance is identified. A race starts to try and thwart this
plot. Was the body found at the house connected to it? All roads seem to lead
back to Treasonfield, and there are more revelations about family
relationships.
The reader certainly has to keep
on their toes when it comes to the relationships in the story, but Briggs has
written yet another fast-moving, convincing, intelligent, thoroughly researched
and addictively plotted novel. One should always look further than the mere
plot in Briggs’s work: the descriptions of the battlefields and associated
activities are extremely vivid and at times very moving. Mallory’s time in the
back streets of Geneva is also atmospheric.
The novel ends, as it started, in
1952. Marie finds out from Uncle Ned what happened to the family in the rest of
the war and the years after it. She is also given a letter written to her by
Aunt Giselle which, when put together with what else Marie has learnt, does
much to explain Giselle’s previous attitude. It is a touching conclusion, if
not an entirely happy one.
The Secrets of Treasonfield House is an excellent and thoroughly
enjoyable novel which I recommend enthusiastically. But remember: trust no one.
-------
Reviewer: David Whittle
J. C. Briggs taught English for many years
in schools in Cheshire, Hong Kong, and Lancashire. She now lives in a cottage
by a river in Cumbria with a view of the Howgill Fells and a lot of sheep,
though it is the streets of Victorian London that are mostly in her mind when
she is writing about Charles Dickens as a detective. There are eleven novels in
the series so far, published by Sapere Books. The latest,
The Jaggard Case,
came out in October 2022. Number eleven,
The Waxwork Man, comes out on
September 15
th. Another novel will come out at the end of 2023. This
is a new departure, a novel about an empty house called Foulstone in the old
county of Westmorland, a house with secrets kept since the First World War. She was Vice Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association
(2018-2022), is still a board member of the CWA, a member of Historical
Writers’ Association, the Dickens Fellowship, The Society of Authors, and a
trustee of Sedbergh Book Town.
jcbriggsbooks.com
David Whittle is firstly a musician (he is an organist and was
Director of Music at Leicester Grammar School for over 30 years) but has always
enjoyed crime fiction. This led him to write a biography of the composer Bruce
Montgomery who is better known to lovers of crime fiction as Edmund Crispin,
about whom he gives talks now and then. He is currently convenor of the East Midlands
Chapter of the Crime Writers’ Association.
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