Front Page Fridays Week-47
Front Page Fridays Week-47
Welcome to Front Page Fridays Week-47. On Fridays I showcase the first page of a new book.
My Front Page Fridays Week-47 guest is Mary-Jane Riley with her early Cold War mystery, Beattie Cavendish and the Highland Hideaway, published by Allison & Busby.
Here’s the opening:
CHAPTER ONE
February 1949
‘. . . I haven’t seen those wee bairns for so long and I want to hug them really tightly.’
Beattie Cavendish applied a slick of her favourite red lipstick and adjusted her hat in the speckled mirror of the compartment as her garrulous travelling companion continued to talk at her. She dabbed perfume on the insides of her wrists and on the pulse points either side of her neck, determined to dispel the stuffy air of the cabin with Jean Patou’s Joy. If she surrounded herself with the scent of jasmine and roses, she could forget the smell of feet and stale sweat.
In the two-berth cabin on the sleeper train from Euston to Scotland, hours of Mrs Waterfield’s company – for that was her companion’s name – had left her drained.
‘Inverness,’ called the train conductor as he made his way through the carriage. ‘This train ends its journey at Inverness. Take care when you leave the train as the platform is a wee bit icy this morning.’
Beattie tucked a stray hair under her hat and put a smile on her face though her eyes were gritty and her mind foggy. She shrugged on her fur coat, grateful now for her mother’s insistence in giving it to her. ‘Mon Dieu, ma chérie,’ her maman had exclaimed upon hearing her daughter was travelling to Scotland for work. ‘It is so very cold there, I am told.’ And she’d shivered in that overly dramatic way of hers. But cold or not, that was where Beattie had been assigned for work and, after a whirlwind of packing and of reading official files, she had made her way to Euston for the overnight sleeper train to Inverness.
About Beattie Cavendish and the Highland Hideaway
It’s 1949 and the Cold War between East and West is intensifying. Rumours abound that the Russians are making advances in creating an atomic bomb. Spies are everywhere. No one can be trusted.
Beattie Cavendish, special operative for a covert section of GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) is sent to the Highlands of Scotland, to the listening station at Kilbray. The Commander is missing and the station has been failing in its key role gathering intelligence from the Soviet Union. There are rumours of an East German spy ring operating in the area. Beattie’s arrival is greeted with suspicion and mistrust by the station’s staff and she faces an uphill battle in her search for the truth. Too many people have too much to hide.
Beattie’s deployment also offers an opportunity to visit her Uncle Howard whose generosity enabled her to go to university. He lives in a cottage near to Kilbray. When she arrives there is no sign of Howard, save for two half-drunk glasses of whisky and a mysterious note declaring ‘I know who you really are’.
Now Beattie has a dilemma. She must do her job at the listening station, but she is convinced Howard’s disappearance is sinister. She needs help, so turns to the one person she knows she can trust implicitly – private detective Patrick Corrigan.
Corrigan has troubles of his own. He needs to get out of London after crossing the Kutsnetsov brothers, a pair of notorious Russian gangsters. He has no hesitation in joining Beattie in her quest to find her uncle.
Together they learn Howard has been visiting a remote Highland lodge used as a ‘cooler’ during the war. It was a place to hide out of favour Allied spies from the world. What possible connection does her uncle have with this secret and dangerous place?
As the snow begins to fall hard and fast, and her past and present and professional and personal worlds collide, Beattie realises the answers she is looking for lie buried in her wartime past, and that the search for the truth will not necessarily bring her peace.
Purchase Links
Beattie Cavendish and the Highland Hideaway: https://tinyurl.com/yckeha4w
Beattie Cavendish and the White Pearl Club: https://tinyurl.com/4yztmsk5
About Mary-Jane Riley
Mary-Jane Riley spent many years as a BBC journalist, presenting magazine programmes on BBC Radio in the Eastern Counties. She has interviewed people from all walks of life – from politicians to authors to actors to local people in villages and towns. It was when the author Ruth Rendell told her to “just write” that she began seriously writing fiction.
Mary-Jane has had stories published in women’s magazines and has contributed to podcasts for the Royal Literary Fund in her role as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Cambridge University.
She has taught Prose Fiction at the University of East Anglia, and has delivered writing workshops to young offenders, people with disabilities and charities – including aid workers in Africa.
Mary-Jane is married to a retired BBC TV Reporter and has three grown up children and a Golden Retriever. She lives in the Waveney Valley in rural Suffolk.
Beattie Cavendish and the White Pearl Club is the first in the Beattie Cavendish series, which is set in post- Second World War Europe featuring Beattie Cavendish, a covert operative for GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters). The second in the series, Beattie Cavendish and the Highland Hideaway, has just been published.
Before inventing Beattie Cavendish, Mary-Jane wrote four contemporary thrillers: The Bad Things, After She Fell, Dark Waters and Gone in the Night, all of which were set in East Anglia.
Social Media Links
Mary-Jane’s website is: maryjaneriley.com and there you can find more details about her and all her books.
She is also on Instagram: maryjanerileyauthor
Facebook: maryjanerileyauthor
Twitter: @mrsmjlriley
Threads: maryjanerileyauthor
I hope you enjoyed reading Front Page Fridays Week-47. Please come back next time when I’ll be featuring a different author and the first page of their book.
And please take a look at books already featured on Front Page Fridays:
1. Blood Ribbons by Lin Le Versha – https://www.rachelsargeant.co.uk/front-page-fridays-week-1/
2. Fatal Blow by Brian Price – https://www.rachelsargeant.co.uk/front-page-fridays-week-2/
3. Can I Trust You? by Rob Gittins – Front Page Fridays Week-3 – Rachel Sargeant
4. The Last Bird of Paradise by AJ Aberford – Front Page Fridays Week-4 – Rachel Sargeant
5. Never Forgive You by Hilly Barmby – Front Page Fridays Week-5 – Rachel Sargeant
6. The Mists of Pencarrack Moor by Terri Nixon – Front Page Fridays Week-6 - Rachel Sargeant
7. The Thief of Joy by Stacey Murray – Front Page Fridays Week-7 - Rachel Sargeant
8. Edge of the Land by Malcolm Hollingdrake – Front Page Fridays Week-8 - Rachel Sargeant
9. The Mind of a Murderer by Michael Wood - https://www.rachelsargeant.co.uk/front-page-fridays-week-9/
10. The Midnight Man by Julie Anderson – Front Page Fridays Week-10 - Rachel Sargeant
11. Dark Road Home by Sheila Bugler – Front Page Fridays Week-11 - Rachel Sargeant
12. Her Charming Man by Rachel Sargeant – Front Page Fridays Week-12 - Rachel Sargeant
13. Wedding Bells at the Lakeside Hotel by Linda Huber – Front Page Fridays Week-13 - Rachel Sargeant
14. Dark Island by Daniel Aubrey – Front Page Fridays Week-14 - Rachel Sargeant
15. The Shame by Maureen Myant – Front Page Fridays Week-15 - Rachel Sargeant
16. Dead Mile by Jo Furniss – Front Page Fridays Week-16 — Rachel Sargeant
17. The Violin and Candlestick by David Jarvis – Front Page Fridays Week-17 — Rachel Sargeant
18. New Memories by S.E. Shepherd – Front Page Fridays Week-18 — Rachel Sargeant
19. Young Blood by Victoria Gemmell – Front Page Fridays Week-19 — Rachel Sargeant
20. Private Investigations by Rob Gittins – Front Page Fridays Week-20 — Rachel Sargeant
21. The Car Horn revolution by A.J. Aberford – Front Page Fridays Week-21 — Rachel Sargeant
22. What Lies Beneath by Maureen Myant – Front Page Fridays Week-22 — Rachel Sargeant
23. A Safe Place by Stephanie Carty – Front Page Fridays Week-23 — Rachel Sargeant
24. Fatal Image by Brian Price – Front Page Fridays Week-24 — Rachel Sargeant
25. Run For Your Lies by A.A. Abbott – Front Page Fridays Week-25 — Rachel Sargeant
26. A Walk in the Park by Natalie Kleinman – Front Page Fridays Week-26 — Rachel Sargeant
27. A Storm in a Teacup by Rachael Gray – Front Page Fridays Week-27 — Rachel Sargeant
28. The Midnight Bookshop by Amanda James – https://www.rachelsargeant.co.uk/blog/front-page-fridays-week-28
29. A Death in the Afternoon by Julie Anderson – Front Page Fridays Week-29 — Rachel Sargeant
30. Justice by Madalyn Morgan – Front Page Fridays Week-30 — Rachel Sargeant
31. Let Me Out by Amanda Brittany – https://www.rachelsargeant.co.uk/blog/front-page-fridays-week-31
32. A Pocketful of Poisons by Brian Price – https://www.rachelsargeant.co.uk/blog/85orb6bc15cs2voyn37yv3jprw0jec
33. Tribute by Madalyn Morgan – Front Page Fridays Week-33 — Rachel Sargeant
34. Mistress of the Manor by Cara Clayton – https://www.rachelsargeant.co.uk/blog/front-page-fridays-week-34
35. Waves of Change in Pelican Crossing by Maggie Chistensen – Front Page Fridays Week-35 — Rachel Sargeant
36. A French Inheritance by Jennifer Bohnet – Front Page Fridays Week-36
37. Beneath the Same Moon by AS Andrejevic – Front Page Fridays Week-37 — Rachel Sargeant
38. The Fallen by Maureen Myant - Front Page Fridays Week-38 — Rachel Sargeant
39. The Bad Women by Jennie Ensor – Front Page Fridays Week-39 — Rachel Sargeant
40. Lies Between Friends by AA Abbott – Front Page Fridays Week-40 — Rachel Sargeant
41. Fatal Shot by Brian Brice – My Front Page Fridays Week-41 — Rachel Sargeant
42. The Alibi by Katharine Johnson – My Front Page Fridays Week-42 — Rachel Sargeant
43. The Croatian Island Library by Eva Glyn – https://www.rachelsargeant.co.uk/blog/front-page-fridays-week-43
44. If I Were You by Helen Matthews – Front Page Fridays Week-44 — Rachel Sargeant
45. (Not Quite) Done With Dating by Bella Osborne – Front Page Fridays Week-45
46. Poison at the Wild Haggis Bookshop by Jackie Baldwin – Front Page Fridays Week-46 — Rachel Sargeant