As World War II grinds on, air warden Poppy Redfern, now a screenwriter with the Crown Films Unit, is dispatched to Didcote airfield to interview several top-notch female pilots for a film project. The "Attagirls" are an impressive group: skilled, glamorous and intelligent. But when two of them meet their ends in fatal crashes attributed to pilot error, Poppy and her American boyfriend, Griff O'Neal, suspect foul play. Tessa Arlen (Poppy Redfern and the Midnight Murders) draws readers into a web of deception on the ground and in the skies in Poppy's second adventure, Poppy Redfern and the Fatal Flyers.
Narrated in Poppy's engaging first-person voice, the case begins with Poppy trying to suss out the Attagirls: friendly Letty, plainspoken Australian June, young mother Annie, enigmatic Zofia (a Polish countess in exile). When Edwina--an accomplished flyer but something of a self-styled femme fatale--dies in a crash, Poppy suspects several of the pilots may have a motive for murder. But why kill Letty, too? Accompanied by Griff and her faithful corgi, Bess, Poppy pokes around the airfield asking questions while trying to keep her script on track. Meanwhile, her attraction to Griff is often at odds with her natural British reserve, and readers get a glimpse of Poppy trying to balance their relationship with her professional responsibilities (and romantic advice from Zofia).
Full of historical detail and red herrings, with a plucky heroine and plenty of witty asides, Arlen's latest is catnip for Anglophile mystery lovers. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams