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A rec from Wychwood, and a goodie. What seems like an ordinary English country house mystery has dark political motivations and implications, as Walton gradually reveals more and more about this alternate 1949, one in a world where Britain made peace with Hitler in early 1941. Brr.

Walton does a great job of showing how ordinary, and in some cases, perfectly decent people can be affected by prejudice and by the removal of certain freedoms. Lucy, who carries half the POV, is a wonderfully-constructed character, and I really enjoyed watching her develop. The other characters, though none were so clearly-drawn, are also captivating. However, Walton does make one character choice that puzzles me: almost everyone in this book is gay, or at least bisexual, to the point where it began to seem a little ridiculous and bad-fanficcy. Because unlike in real life, in a novel that kind of thing is a choice—on the part of the author, and I'm really not sure what Walton was trying to say with it. Except maybe that when they think nobody's looking, even the crustiest Tories are all indiscriminately schtupping each other, the bloody hypocrites. Okay, but I already got that they were hypocrites, and also racists and very bad people. They don't need to be hypocritical, racist, very bad gay people, do they? Though on second thought, that does sound increasingly like the Republican party in this country. Never mind.

That little tangent aside: this was captivating and scary and much braver and true to itself than, say, Philip Roth's The Plot Against America; Roth kind of wusses out at the end of that one and makes everything okay again. Not so, here. Though there is a sequel coming—in just over a week, in fact. *wants*