‘The Secrets of Treasonfield House’ by J. C. Briggs

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.
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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.