But, most of all, I wanted to know how an ordinary young woman could become a spy.
Before I began writing the novel, I traveled to London and began my research, spending many afternoons at the National Archives, which had recently declassified MI5 transcripts of interrogations and other procedures from the period. This gave me essential insights into their methods as well as the Service’s mindset about the enemy. During my time in the UK, I came across the story of a young woman named Joan Miller, who was, like Evelyn in An Unlikely Spy, recruited into MI5 in her early twenties, taken under the wing of spymaster Maxwell Knight (later the inspiration for “M” in Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels), and tasked with infiltrating groups sympathetic to the Nazis at the beginning of the war.
This first group she infiltrated was called the Right Club, and their leader was a Scottish MP, Captain Archibald Ramsay. The leader of the women’s faction of the club was a White Russian émigré, Anna Wolkoff. Along with Ramsay and an American cipher clerk, Wolkoff was responsible for the theft of classified cables between the Admiralty and high-ranking Americans, and their dissemination. Miller’s investigation led to arrests and secret trials, but a few years later she was dismissed from the Service. She died in a mysterious car crash in the 1980s not long after she had published a memoir about her time in MI5.
This woman was fascinating. At an age when I was mooching around university, she was embroiled in suspenseful and dangerous investigations that had real consequences for the Allies and the war effort. What kind of person did you need to be to excel in this role, which required so much deception, ingratiation, and acting? In An Unlikely Spy, Evelyn must adopt the persona of someone with unforgivably abhorrent views, while at the same time cultivating intimate friendships with the enemy. What toll does this take on a person and their sense of self? These questions propelled my writing.
I have tried to remain as faithful as possible to the history of these events, but as all novelists must I have made some adjustments to the real timeline to best build the story. For instance, Anna Wolkoff was arrested in April 1940 (Nina Ivanov is arrested in early February) and the Siemens-Schuckert case that Evelyn subsequently investigates took place between late 1940 and early 1941, not in late February and early March, as depicted in the novel. Max Catto’s They Walk Alone was performed at the Comedy Theatre on Panton Street from May to June 1939, several months before Julia and Evelyn attend a performance. Evelyn’s interrogation of Jacob Vermeer, who is a fictional character, takes place in early December 1939. In fact, six agents were picked up from Ireland, though not until May 1940, and according to MI5 files, between September and October 1940 a further twenty-five Dutch agents were parachuted in, expecting to play a role in the imminent German invasion. And while Evelyn’s role in the MI5 counterintelligence team has been partly based on that of Joan Miller, her personality, background, relationships, strengths, and foibles are all a work of fiction.
Acknowledgments
AN UNLIKELY SPY was largely produced on unceded sovereign Wurundjeri country and unceded sovereign Jagera country. I acknowledge the traditional custodians of these lands, and pay my respects to their Elders, past, present, and future.
My dear friend Tess Ley passed away before this novel was published. I was always grateful for Tess’s support of my writing, and as a detective with experience in counterintelligence, she provided me with a great deal of insight into this work that I later used to develop Evelyn’s character. I miss Tess very much. She has an enduring place in my life, and this book is dedicated to her.
Thank you to Pippa Masson for being my wonderful agent and seeing this project through from beginning to end, as well as to Caitlan Cooper-Trent and the rest of the team at Curtis Brown Australia. Thank you to Dan Lazar at Writers House in the US for believing in the potential of Evelyn’s story and helping me to shape the manuscript in its later stages.
Thank you to Jane Palfreyman, Angela Handley, and everyone at Allen & Unwin for supporting my writing and having patience as I developed the novel. Particular thanks to my editors, Kate Goldsworthy and Ali Lavau, and to Clara Finlay for such an eagle-eyed proof.
Thank you to Helen Atsma, Sara Birmingham, and the whole team at Ecco in New York for taking a punt on a debut novelist. I have been so grateful for all your enthusiasm and hard work.
I would like to thank early readers of An Unlikely Spy, in particular Hannah Kent. Thank you to my supervisors Veny Armanno and Natalie Collie at the University of Queensland for their encouragement in my creative life. And thank you to Creative Victoria, who awarded me a grant to work on an early draft of the novel. Arts funding in Australia is a lifeline for writers—we must preserve it.
There were many books that assisted in my research of the period, but I would like to make particular mention of Christopher Andrew’s The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5, which was my entry point into better understanding Britain’s intelligence services, along with Mike Hutton’s Life in 1940s London and Bryan Clough’s State Secrets: The Kent-Wolkoff Affair. Thank you to the good folks at the National Archives in London for helping me navigate the system, as well as the staff at the Imperial War Museum.
I would like to thank my brother, Ashley, and Bethany Rote, for their love and friendship. Thank you to Roger Griffith and Philippa Milward for all their support over the years. Thank you to Tori Batters for being my one and only Spin, and to Janine “N-P” Rainbow. And thank you to my parents, Peter and Fiona Starford, especially for all their trips up to Queensland; it’s been fun.
And to my son, Theo Griffith, who arrived in the middle of all this. You fill each day with indescribable happiness. And last but not least, to Elinor Griffith. You are everything to me.
About the Author
REBECCA STARFORD is the cofounder and publishing director of Kill Your Darlings and previously worked for Text Publishing and Affirm Press. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland and lives in Brisbane, Australia.
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Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
AN UNLIKELY SPY. Copyright © 2021 by Rebecca Starford. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Originally published as The Imitator in Australia in 2021 by Allen & Unwin.
Cover design by Sara Wood
Cover photographs by H. Armstrong Roberts (women) and Peter Zelei (London skyline), both © Getty Images
FIRST U.S. EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Starford, Rebecca, 1984– author.
Title: An unlikely spy : a novel / Rebecca Starford.
Description: First U.S. edition. | New York, NY : Ecco, [2021] | Originally published as The Imitator in Australia in 2021 by Allen & Unwin.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021002297 (print) | LCCN 2021002298 (ebook) | ISBN 9780063037885 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780063037915 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Women spies—Fiction. | Great Britain. MI5—Fiction. | World War, 1939–1945—Fiction. | GSAFD: Spy stories. | Historical fiction.
Classification: LCC PR9619.4.S725 U55 2021 (print) | LCC PR9619.4.S725 (ebook) | DDC 823/.92—dc23
LC recor
d available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021002297
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021002298
Digital Edition JUNE 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-303791-5
Version 03312021
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-303788-5
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