Kensington
Published on June 24, 2025
Reviewed by Meredith Frazier
Set in England in 1941, A Beacon in the Night is the second novel in David Lewis’s The Secret Churchill Files series starring secret agent Caitrin Colline.
While much of London has been obliterated by the Blitz, it hasn’t cowed the British people into submission as Hitler had hoped. Plus, he is now having to devote resources to the Russian front, so he has come up with another plan to destroy Britain: target specific, culturally significant sites that can be destroyed by a single bomber following a signal from a special beacon. As treasured buildings, convalescing soldiers, and civilians are destroyed with increasing accuracy, Caitrin and her partner Lord Hector Neville-Percy, along with members of the all-female secret agency 512 must discover the traitor who is so obviously feeding the Nazis inside information and bring an end to the terror.
In spite of the grim subject matter, Lewis manages to bring a bit of lightness and even humor to his telling, but he doesn’t flinch from horrific reality, either. This is war, and anyone and everyone can die. The city may still be host to coming-out balls and club nights, but it is also a hellscape of leveled buildings, crunching glass, bodies, and rationing. Caitrin is a strong character with a sense of humor, but she struggles with impossible decisions and real suffering.
All in all, Lewis keeps things real enough to make the fictional situation entirely believable, describes the settings with expertly chosen details to bring them to life, and creates main characters that have intriguing—and believable—contradictions. The ending feels a little rushed, and some of the events are a bit suspect, but overall, A Beacon in the Night is a well-told story with an interesting plot and equally interesting characters. It works well as a standalone but tosses in a few enticing references to the previous book in the series and leaves the possibility of more Caitrin Colline appearances possible—and hoped for.