A mystery and an unexpected love story set at the height of the Blitz, The Midnight News is the stunning new novel from Jo Baker, Sunday Times bestselling author of Longbourn and seven other acclaimed novels.
It’s 1940 and twenty-year-old Charlotte Richmond watches from her attic window as enemy planes fly over London. Still grieving her beloved brother who never returned from France, she is working hard to keep her own little life ticking over: holding down a dull typist job at the Ministry of Information, sharing gin and confidences with her best friend Elena, and dodging her difficult father. She has good reason to keep her head down and stay out of trouble. She knows what happens when she makes a nuisance of herself.
On her way to work, she often sees the boy who feeds the birds – a source of unexpected joy amidst the rubble of the Blitz. But every day brings new scenes of devastation, and after yet another heartbreaking loss, Charlotte has an uncanny sense of foreboding. Someone is stalking the darkness, targeting her friends. And now he is following her.
She no longer knows who to trust. She can’t even trust herself. She knows this; her family have told her so often enough. As grief and suspicion consume her, Charlotte’s nerves become increasingly frayed, and soon her very freedom is under threat…
The Midnight News is a wonderfully character-driven novel that demonstrates what happens when an inventive author truly lets her protagonist take the reins. While categorising books into genres can be a helpful guide for readers, I love being surprised by a book that evades easy compartmentalisation.
Baker’s latest novel is as varied in mood and themes as Charlotte’s remarkable life is. It is, of course, a remarkable work of historical fiction, with details of the Blitz painted more vividly and humanistically than I can ever remember having read. But it’s also a warm love story, built on unlikely friendships and the uniting power of difference in the face of hardship.
And it’s a coming-of-age story. It conveys Charlotte’s experience of the tender age of twenty, set against a backdrop of restrictive societal pressures and constant upheaval from the war, both of which exacerbate her ongoing mental health challenges.
And, of course, it’s a gripping psychological thriller. The question that looms large over the plot is whether it’s also a crime thriller… No spoilers here, though, you’ll have to read for yourself to answer that one.
The Midnight News is a page-turner that had me barrelling toward the end in search of answers. But I also caught myself forced to slow down at times in order to truly savour Baker’s descriptive prose, her unique turns of phrase and life-like dialogue, and the poignant moments between characters that had me completely immersed in the flow of the story.
This genre-defying thriller will leave you whirling, but it will also sit with you, quietly haunting and poignant, for a long while after you close its pages.
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