The Winter Garden by Jane Thynne
Last year, I was thrilled to read Jane Thynne’s novel Black Roses, actress/spy Clara Vine’s first outing in 1930s Berlin, in which she became accepted in the high social circles of the First Reich’s wives. This was the story of how Clara came to Berlin to act in the movies, but got sidetracked into the Reich Fashion Bureau headed by Magda Goebbels and later became a spy.
In a later Q&A with the author, Jane teased about the Mitfords making an appearance in volume two of the planned trilogy. I couldn’t wait for The Winter Garden*…
It is now 1937 and sadly, Leo Quinn, the spy who recruited and loved Clara in Black Roses has gone back to England. Clara is living alone and is shortly to start filming her first starring role as the wife of a Luftwaffe pilot at the famous Ufa studios in Berlin. Enough of Clara though for the moment, for The Winter Garden starts with the murder of Anna Hansen at Himmler’s Bride School, set up to train fiancées of SS officers to be perfect Nazi wives. Shockingly, it really existed – and you couldn’t marry an SS officer without graduating from the two month course.
Today they had been focusing on ‘Cooking Without Butter’ because of the shortage, and very dull it had been too. Though that was no bad thing, Anna thought, because all these regular meals were making her plump. After lunch came Culture, consisting of a talk on fairy tales. All brides needed to learn fairy tales because the German mother was the ‘culture bearer’ to the next generation. Today’s lecturer had explained how in Cinderella it was the prince’s Germanic instincts that led him to reject the step-sisters’ alien blood and search for a maiden who was racially pure.
It turns out that Clara knew Anna, who had been a dancer and artist’s model (which introduces the degenerate art exhibition), before changing tack to become respectable and when Clara’s American journalist friend Mary visits the Bride School, Anna’s room-mate gives her Anna’s little writing case to take back to Anna’s family. Little do they know what the case contains …
Clara is invited to a party by Magda Goebbels, ostensibly to act as a translator. I must admit, I was sort of ‘glad’ to see all the first ladies of the Reich reappear in this second volume, they gave a sense of continuity! However, Magda and the others are merely on the sidelines this time. I did love their little rebellion though, when, on hearing that the Führer wouldn’t be coming to a party, they got out their French couture dresses that he so disapproved of.
Also arriving in Berlin are Edward and Mrs Simpson, and Diana and Unity Mitford are already well entrenched. All the right-wing English notables are being cultivated and encouraged by Hitler. Clara needs to find out about the Mitfords, so she takes Emmy Goering who is pregnant a present …
‘Unity Mitford!’ Emmy Goerring grimaced. ‘That girl with her staring saucer eyes and the Party badge on her heaving bosom. The men call her Mitfahrt – the travelling companion – because she’s always there. She absolutely dogged Hitler’s heels at the rally. She spends every lunchtime at the Osteria Bavaria in the hope of catching Hitler’s eye. She’s dreadfully jealous of Eva Braun, of course, terrified that Eva comes first in Hitler’s affections. I’ve told her, it’s a bit late to worry about that. Eva has her own room in the Reich Chancellery, doesn’t she?’
‘So Unity’s not popular then?’
‘No one can understand why the Führer likes her. Apparently, he loves the fact that her middle name is Valkyrie. Eva says, well, she looks the part, especially the legs. Himmler hates her too. He thinks she might be a spy. He has a tame SS man follow her around, posing as a photographer. But I said to Heinrich, spies don’t go around dressed in a home-made storm-trooper’s uniform, do they? …’
So we already have the murder mystery and all the excitement caused by the Mitfords and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and a third main strand is added to the novel. This involves the Luftwaffe, and here Clara is able to help get information by virtue of her next film role being the wife of a pilot – it’s research. This is where Clara finds a new lover, and cultivates a Luftwaffe test pilot who of course falls for her – at least slightly. Everything gets stirred up, and Clara ends up in a precarious situation, as you’d expect of any good spy novel. I won’t elucidate any further.
Jane Thynne has again done her research impeccably – all the details seem perfect. I was slightly disappointed at first that Leo was out of the picture, but that frees Clara for other relationships. I did feel that there was a lot going on in this volume, and that maybe the Anna story or the Luftwaffe story would have been enough on their own – we could have had a quartet rather than a trilogy. That is a minor quibble, for being immersed in Clara’s world is getting addictive and the stakes are getting higher and higher as war nears. The final part of the trilogy, A War of Flowers, will be published in 2015 – and I’ll be waiting for it! (9/10)
* * * * *
Source: The Publisher sent me a lovely signed copy – thank you to them and Jane.
To explore further on Amazon UK, please click below:
The Winter Garden
Black Roses
* The Winter Garden was published in the USA as Woman in the Shadows
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