A desperate woman in Edwardian London finds an unlikely new job with an undercover spy organization in this charming historical thriller.
London, 1905. Margaret Trant and her ailing mother have fallen on hard times. Living together in a dreary boarding house in St John’s Wood, Margaret’s job with a ramshackle import-export company barely keeps them afloat. Then Margaret spots a newspaper advertisement promising to ‘open new horizons beyond your wildest dreams!’.
After a grueling interview, Margaret finds herself in a new position as a secretary in a dingy backstreet shop. But all is not as it seems; she is in fact working for a highly secret branch of the intelligence service, Bureau 8, whose mission is to track down and neutralize a ruthless band of anarchists known as The Scorpions.
Margaret’s guilty love of detective fiction scarcely prepares her for the reality of true criminality. But she soon discovers that she’s far more resourceful and courageous than she ever imagined . . .