A review by judyward
The Spy Game by Georgina Harding

4.0

Was Hilda a spy for the Soviet Union who returned to Russia before she could be unmasked and arrested or did she simply die in an auto accident? Eight year old Anna and her older brother, Peter, are told that their mother is dead, but there is no funeral, their father (who had a secret job during World War II in England and who met their mother in Berlin after the war) took them to the sea to stay immediately after their mother's death, and when they returned to their home all traces of their mother have been removed. Unable to understand what has happened or to have any closure, Anna and Peter, especially Peter, conjecture that their mother was a Cold War spy and begin to collect evidence. Undoubtedly their suspicions were aroused because there had been a major arrest of two Soviet spies in England on the same day as Hilda's death. The arrested spies had posed as a happily married couple living in rural England and they had been broadcasting and receiving information to and from Russia from a transmitter concealed in their home. Maybe their mother was still alive and living back in East Germany or the Soviet Union. This book focuses on grief, loss, and the inaccuracy of childhood memories as Anna and Peter begin to put together recollections of their mother, snatches of conversation they overheard, the realization that their mother was raised in a German village that was now inside the boundary of the Soviet Union, and supicions of people and circumstances in their English village to convince themselves that if they figure out what really happened they will find their mother again.