The golden hour

The Bahamas 1941. Newly-widowed Leonora “Lulu” Randolph arrives in the Bahamas to investigate the Governor and his wife for a New York society magazine. After all American readers have an insatiable appetite for news of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor that glamorous couple whose love affair nearly brought the British monarchy to its knees five years earlier. What more intriguing backdrop for their romance than a wartime Caribbean paradise a colonial playground for kingpins of ill-gotten empires? Or so Lulu imagines. But as she infiltrates the Duke and Duchess’s social circle and the powerful cabal that controls the islands’ political and financial affairs she uncovers evidence that beneath the glister of Wallis and Edward’s marriage lies an ugly — and even treasonous — reality. In fact Windsor-era Nassau seethes with spies financial swindles and racial tension and in the middle of it all stands Benedict Thorpe: a scientist of tremendous charm and murky national loyalties. Inevitably the willful and wounded Lulu falls in love. Then Nassau’s wealthiest man is murdered in one of the most notorious cases of the century and the resulting coverup reeks of royal privilege. Benedict Thorpe disappears without a trace and Lulu embarks on a journey to London and beyond to unpick Thorpe’s complicated family history: a fateful love affair a wartime tragedy and a mother from whom all joy is stolen.--inside cover