Spies, secrets and spiritualism in Death in the Dunes

1950s, as they say, is another country.  It's one of the reasons why I love researching and writing this series, that and my lovely central character, the kind, intelligent and thoughtful Detective Inspector Ryga who has his demons to deal with as a result of his war experience.  He spent four years as a German prisoner-of-war. 

Ryga, however, doesn't wish to dwell on that. Like many in this era he wants to put the war behind him and get on with his life.  That's easier said than done sometimes, and in DEATH IN THE DUNES, set on the atmospheric Kent coast of Dungeness, Ryga is haunted by his past as are others he encounters while trying to solve the murder of pilot, Barbara Fennel, a war widow, found dead in the dunes by a fisherman at Greatstone-on-Sea.

Barbara, a former pilot with the Air Auxiliary Transport during the war, was employed as a pilot with Ardua Airways at Lympe Airport, close by. Her boss, Ken Ducket, a former RAF colleague of her late brother’s in Bomber Command, took her on at the same time she moved to Hythe. Barbara, after giving up what seems to have been good job with the Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment at Boscombe Down, in Salisbury, had moved to Hythe and taken a shabby house for rent three months before her murder. Why?  

Why did Barbara alight from a deserted lonely railway station on a dark, cold, bleak, March evening to meet her killer when she had a car in working order and could have driven there?  

Why had she arranged a clandestine meeting in such a lonely spot? 

Who was she going to meet in the sand dunes?

Was Barbara a spy or had she uncovered a spy ring?

Spies and Secrets

It’s not so impossible because the 1950s was the era of the Cold War with the real fear of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union happening at any time. It's the time of spies, when anyone could be suspected and people were looking over their shoulders or under their beds!

Real Life Spies

In real life in 1950 a top nuclear scientist was jailed for fourteen years at the Old Bailey for spying for the Soviet Union. Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs, 38, a civil servant from Harwell in Berkshire, pleaded guilty to four offences under the Official Secrets Act. German-born he'd fled his home country to escape Nazi persecution in 1933 and had come to be regarded as one of Britain's top atomic scientists.  But beneath the facade was a committed Communist who had been passing secrets to the Russians for most of the past decade. 

Ten months after Fuchs was jailed another Harwell scientist, Professor Bruno Pontecorvo, went missing and it was later discovered he had fled to Russia. Fuchs was released in 1959 and went to live in East Germany where he became deputy director of the Central Institute for Nuclear Research in Rossendorf. Klaus Fuchs died on 28th January, 1988.

Spiritualism

As Ryga follows in the footsteps of Barbara’s investigation it takes him to the murky waters of spiritualism and how those suffering loss during the war were being exploited. In 1951 when this novel is set The Fraudulent Mediums Act was made UK law. It made it illegal to fraudulently claim to be a spiritualistic medium or possess psychic powers (such as clairvoyance) for reward. 

It replaced the 1735 Witchcraft Act and 1824 Vagrancy Act, requiring proof of dishonest intent to convict.  It was an offence to claim to be a medium, telepathist, or clairvoyant with intent to deceive, or to use fraudulent devices during a séance or reading. A person could only be convicted if it was proven they acted for "reward" (money or other valuable consideration). Penalties included fines, imprisonment for up to four months on summary conviction, or up to two years on indictment.

DEATH IN THE DUNES also touches on the mental strain of the pilots in Bomber Command during the war and how this affected them then and afterwards.

It is, however, essentially the story of a determined woman out to get justice who ends up being killed for it.   

Ryga is embroiled in a case filled with secrets and lies. A case where no one is who they say they are, and things aren’t always what they seem . . 

 DEATH IN THE DUNES is available on Amazon Kindle, Kindle Unlimited and in paperback