Charlie Hart is a freshly graduated engineer with a healthy lack of respect for No Entry signs. Her biggest problems in life are workplace misogyny and the illegality of her urban exploration hobby. But when her family is kidnapped right out of the heart of London, her world is flipped upside down by the suave asshole of a spy whose job it is to get them back.

Charlie is drawn into a world of misfits and irregulars working for an intelligence agency that doesn’t officially exist. The Special Operations Executive was consigned to history’s rubbish bin in 1946, and so far as most people know it stayed there. Now it’s Charlie’s only hope of rescuing her family from the megalomaniac billionaire who has taken them from her.

And it turns out he’s got a nuclear arsenal that he really wants to use.

Starting with a disclaimer that this book has nothing to do with the movie of the same name and probably the many, many, books bearing the same name. Afaik, this is not available for sale anywhere, but I’m linking the backerkit page so anyone interested can perhaps contact the author to know where they can grab a copy.

Ngl, I’ve been looking forward to reading this since the Backerkit campaign started. It just took me a while, mainly because I had a reading block when I got the book and then when I was over it, there were books I’d committed to reviewing and then I discovered a new favourite author and you know, the usual.

But I finally got to it, and man, it was a wild ride! I read it in one go, and it ticks so many of my boxes! Queer, check, fun, check, secret agents, check, personal as well as high world ending stakes, sign me up!

It may not be my usual genre to read, but it does tick most of my boxes and I’m just sorry I didn’t read it sooner!

The book opens with a bang, where a secret agent is tailing a convoy of trucks carrying stolen uranium. The trucks are about to cross the border into Saudi Arabia and he needs to find which truck has the uranium and stop the convoy before it crosses the border. Of course, the other trucks may be full of armed guards, so it’s not exactly a cakewalk. What follows is a scene worthy of any Bond movie with gun fights, fists, and a surprising twist.

The next, we cut to London, where freshly minted engineer Charlie Hart is running over rooftops. Charlie has a problem with authority and is too curious for her own good, and who believes that No Entry signs are an invitation to look. We learn something of Charlie and her personality from the first chapter itself. She has to deal with misogyny from a colleague but when it gives her a chance to explore the part of the railway she’s working on that she’s barred from, she can’t let the chance go.

What she finds is a part that’s sectioned off, but which has CCTV monitoring, and for once, she is ready to listen to her own voice of reason and leaves. She goes home to a scene of mayhem, learning that her family has been abducted by people posing as police. Taken to a hotel for her own protection, she is attacked by mysterious men who has killed the cops and saved by an even more mysterious man who promises her answers but fails to deliver.

Frustrated by the lack of progress by the police and wanting to do something, Charlie follows the mysterious Soho to join the Special Operations Executive or The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare as it is called, a secret service so secret no one knows it exists, one that recruits irregulars, queer people, women, anyone that the other intelligence agencies turn their nose up at.

But the truth about her parents’ abduction rocks her world as she learns what’s at stake may be more than her parents’ lives, and she can only depend on Soho and the SOE to bring them home and save the world.

I loved Charlie in this. I loved the training part, and that Charlie had to train for months before she was anywhere ready for a mission, that she has to take a test and pass it before she can be a secret agent. It’s not all gunfights and fisticuffs, but she has to think on her feet, make decisions on the fly while dealing with people vastly more experienced than her.

Halo Morningstar wouldn’t come amiss as a Bond villain, and I liked how Charlie goes from adoring fangirl of his public persona to wanting to put him six feet under. Like she didn’t even have time to mourn the death of her ideals. I really liked the characterisation of everyone in this book. The villains appear a little one dimensional, but it fits the story, and honestly, I am ready to have some villains I can properly hate, and Halo Morningstar and Prussia fit the bill.

And the toys! I don’t think it’s a spy thriller without the toys and the underground secret base. From weapons to vehicles, we have everything, even a quartermaster codenamed Kew.

Everything about this book was good, like man, I was on the edge of my seat for most of it, gnawing at my nails because even though it wasn’t too fast paced, we’re never allowed to forget why Charlie is training. The multiple PoVs added depth to the story and made me even more anxious.

If you love spy thrillers and British secret agents, but queer, this is the perfect book for you. The author has penned a brilliant story with engaging characters that I wish to see more of.

You can find the Backerkit campaign here and the author’s website here.