Note: Contains spoilers about the ending of Spies in St Petersburg.
Review
1912.Three years on from the mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow. Three months since Sophie and Lil returned from St Petersburg to shocking news about their friend. Now they know there is a double agent working for the Fraternitas Draconum. Cases relating to this sinister band of criminals must now be handled away from the Bureau.
The Fraternitas is searching for a weapon using clues hidden in a series of historical paintings. It is important that they do not get their hands on this weapon. In order to prevent this, Sophie must see the last painting in the series. This means a trip to Venice. Sophie poses as a tourist together with keen artists Jack and Leo. However, a major carnival is about to take place and the city’s alleys are teeming with villains in disguise.
Meanwhile Lil is determined to help her friend Joe, who has been missing for three months. Lil takes it upon herself to infiltrate a newspaper building and discover who has been receiving messages from the double-agent at the Bureau.
This series – like the Sinclair mysteries – gets better and better. Every book is brillaint and there’s something unique and special about each one.
This story sees some major change to the character’s personalities and ambitions. They are now almost four years older than the events of the first book, and have undergone all kinds of adventures, near-death experiences and other traumas. Losing Joe has caused a rift between Sophie and Lil. Not a major one, but they handle the grief differently. Lil is determined Joe is alive and wants to drop everything else to help. Sophie, meanwhile, puts everything into her buisness and beleives the only way to help Joe – if he can be helped – is to learn more about the Fraternitas Draconum. Lil’s mood shapes her response and she’s in a very different place emotionally from earlier books.
Venice is a setting beloved of writers. Woodfine demonstrates that time-period is key to making that setting believable. The focus on tourist sites and carnivals made me feel as if I was experiencing Venice alongside protagonist Sophie. The minor characters add to the atmosphere, especially the overly-British crowd at Sophie’s hotel.
Intrigue, carnival atmosphere and super-sleuthing combine to make a great adventure. Up to Woodfine’s exceptionally high standards.
Katherine Woodfine Q&A
Which time period and specific aspects of Venice does your book explore?
Villains in Venice is set at the beginning of 1912. We join young detective Sophie as she sets out to Venice, apparently for a holiday — though really, she’s on an important mission for the British Secret Service Bureau. On the trail of a missing painting and a dangerous weapon, her adventure takes her from a genteel boarding house full of English tourists, to a glamorous masked ball at a crumbling Venetian palazzo, and across the lagoon in a gondola to investigate to a mysterious old tomb.
You’ve taken characters from your first series into new adventures. Please can you explain the specific challenges and joys of this?
When I finished writing the Sinclair’s Mysteries, I knew that I wanted to know more about what would happen to Sophie, Lil and their friends in the future. While the Sinclair’s Mysteries series is very much the story of how they first become detectives, in the Taylor & Rose Secret Agents books I decided to rejoin them a few years later, when they had grown up a little more, gained more experience of detective work — and were taking on the exciting new challenge of working as secret agents for the British government.
I’ve had such a lot of fun writing this new series, which sees the characters venture beyond London to explore different cities, working both together and separately, and learning more about themselves and about their place in the world. It’s given me the chance to spend more time with beloved characters, and indulge myself in historical research, which I love — but there certainly have been challenges too. One of the most especially challenging aspects has been trying to represent the complex politics of pre-war Europe in a way that works for young readers, whilst at the same time telling an exciting Edwardian spy story!
Have you got any tips for aspiring writers about keeping readers hooked across a series?
Characterisation is so important — I think that feeling connected to the characters and caring what happens to them is a huge part of what drives readers to keep on with a series. I’ve seen that very clearly for myself with Taylor & Rose: Spies in St Petersburg ends with a big cliffhanger concerning one of the main characters, and since it was published I’ve had so many messages from readers desperate to know what happens next!
What inspires your work and did anything specifically inspire Villains in Venice?
For me, inspiration comes from all over the place — literature, history, films, art. With the Taylor & Rose books, I’ve also visited each of the cities I’ve written about, wandering around and trying to imagine myself back into the past. Villains in Venice is partly inspired by some snippets of Venetian history, and by real places you can see there — from the lion and dragon statues in the Piazza San Marco, to the cemetery island of San Michele. A Room with a View by E M Forster, one of my favourite novels from the period, helped inspire the scenes in the English lodging-house. There’s also a nod to Agatha Christie in a sinister poisoning episode that takes place in this book!
Please can you hint at the challenges Sophie, Lil and the gang might face in the future?
There are most certainly many challenges ahead for Sophie, Lil and their friends. There are tensions simmering between Britain and Germany, and the mysterious secret society, the Fraternitas Draconum, are working harder than ever to stir up trouble all across Europe. With a double-agent at work within the Secret Service Bureau itself, it’s increasingly clear that nowhere is safe. What’s more, Sophie in particular is beginning to suspect that they can’t always trust the British government to do the right thing. And after all it’s 1912… so there are some major events looming on the horizon…
- Thanks to Katherine Woodfine for your time with this Q&A. Villains in Venice by Katherine Woodfine is available now from Egmont Books. (RRP £6.99)
