7 Things You Should Know about Betrayal at Blackthorn Park
(Spoiler free!)
Betrayal at Blackthorn Park is now out in bookshops, and in honor of the big release week I’m sharing seven things that you might not know before reading the book!
Blackthorn Park is based on Winston Churchill’s real-life “toy box”
I wrote about the inspiration for Blackthorn Park, an English manor called The Firs, where a secretive department called MD1 developed covert weapons for Special Operations Executive (SOE) operatives. You can read more about it in this article:
But the SOE’s “finishing school” at Beaulieu, where Evelyne goes for training, really did exist.
During the war, the SOE sent agents in training to Beaulieu, a requisitioned estate where they would be trained in all things espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance. About 3,000 male and female agents passed through Beaulieu during the war—including one (fictional) Evelyne Redfern.
Just like in Betrayal in Blackthorn Park, the SOE used everyday household items to create ingenious solutions to problems that came up while creating their weapons of sabotage.
In the book, I make mention of some of the weapons being created at Blackthorn Park. At least one of those things—a delayed fuse made out of a boiled sweet—was based on real life! The MD1 was struggling to figure out how to create a reliable timing device for a limpet mine, which could be placed underwater on the hull of a ship with magnets. The inventor Stuart Macrae proposed using aniseed balls, a hard candy, which would dissolve at a predictable pace and allow the commando setting the device to get away in time. It worked, and the SOE used the devices during missions like Operation Jaywick.
Betrayal at Blackthorn Park is my nod to my love of country house murder mysteries.
Evelyne is a dedicated reader of Golden Age detective fiction, a trait we share—although I suspect she would quickly outstrip me if we went toe to toe in a reading challenge. I wanted to nod to one of my favorite tropes in the genre, the country house murder mystery, with my own twist of that country house being a requisitioned weapons facility.
Evelyne’s reading list is constantly growing—and you can read along with her.
With Evelyne being such a dedicated reader, it only made sense to give readers a list of the books mentioned in the series. You can find it here:
The book originally started a few days earlier in the story than the final version.
I originally conceived of Betrayal at Blackthorn Park starting with Evelyne breaking into a mysterious building to—Well, let’s just say that storyline got cut in order to bring the action up to London and get into things faster. However, instead of throwing the original beginning away, I decided to make it into “Mission on the Moor,” a short story that slots neatly between A Traitor in Whitehall and Betrayal at Blackthorn Park.
If you would like read “Mission the Moor,” it’s available here:
Betrayal at Blackthorn Park is dedicated to my parents—and a TV show.
In the dedication for this book, I name-checked a classic American TV show: PBS’s Mystery!1 Every Thursday growing up as a child, I remember hearing the fainting lady from the intro bleeding through from the living room as my parents watched. As I got older, I also started watching Poirot and other shows—all with that iconic credit sequence and the fabulous Diana Rigg introducing every episode.
Yes, the ! is necessary.