Jennifer Ryan grew up in Britain and moved to Washington, DC fifteen years ago. Previously a non-fiction book editor, she now writes novels set in Second World War Britain and inspired by her grandmother’s stories of the war.Her second novel, The Spies of Shilling Lane, tells the tale of a woman who heads into the London Blitz to see her daughter, only to find her missing.
From Ryan's Q&A with Deborah Kalb:
Q: How did you come up with the idea for The Spies of Shilling Lane, and for your character Mrs. Braithwaite?Visit Jennifer Ryan's website.
A: A few years ago, a quiet 99-year-old woman died in a sleepy London suburb. Below the floorboards in a secret attic annex, they found a semi-automatic Sten gun, ammunition, and other espionage paraphernalia. It was headline news: she was an MI5 operative during and following the Second World War.
As a Second World War aficionado, I was always aware of the roles women played in espionage, especially in mainland Europe as part of the Special Operations Executive.
But it wasn't until Eileen Burgoyne's past was dug out that I realized how women were used by MI5, who were dealing with threats within the country, including enemy spies, people of German decent who harbored Nazi sentiment, and fifth columnists who supported the Nazis, planning to take down the country from the inside.
I immediately started to imagine how...[read on]
My Book, The Movie: The Spies of Shilling Lane.
Writers Read: Jennifer Ryan.
--Marshal Zeringue