I, Spy by Rhian Tracey is aimed at younger readers. The setting is Bletchley Park, beginning in 1939 as the oh-so ‘hush hush’ decryption centre is just being built and staffed.

Robyn is just 13 years old and she lives within Bletchley Park as her parents work there. She’s really interested in animals and nature so it’s an ideal environment for her, but as she won’t be allowed to travel in and out of Bletchley to go to school she’s told that she won’t be going back to school. She’s given an apprenticeship – learning to look after the carrier pigeons that are so important for delivering secret messages.

She’s quite pleased with it all although she’ll miss her schoolfriends, but then she makes friends with Ned who visits BP with his father for work purposes on a daily basis and things look up. Then Mary, a friend from school gets a job delivering messages within the sprawling Bletchley grounds.

The three friends get up to some high jinx. Robyn is sure that there’s a high profile spy within Bletchley and she’s determined to get to the bottom of it.

This was an enjoyable read although I found that I had to suspend my disbelief at times, particularly as Robyn was expecting her father to start giving her driving lessons on her 13th birthday!! Of course she would have to be 17 before that could happen. Her father didn’t keep his promise, but it just seemed such a strange thing for a 13 year old to expect, especially back then. I can see that this book will be popular with youngsters although I doubt if any children were allowed near the place.

My thanks to the publisher Piccadilly Press for giving me the opportunity to read a digital copy of this book via Netgalley. I,Spy will be published on 2nd, March.

I enjoyed the setting which was very recognisably Bletchley Park, if you want to see what it looks like nowadays you can see some photos I took there fairly recently here, here and here.