SuitabookHide and Seek
Rhian Tracey
- Reading
- If this is part of a series, consider reading the earlier Bletchley Park mystery first: one account says later references matter. Pause afterwards to discuss which wartime details are historical and which are fictionalised.
- Themes
- Secrecy and trust: Ned and his mother must protect a wartime mission while village tensions increase after details appear in the press. The book leaves its stance open to more than one reading.
- Belonging and prejudice: Ned, his mother and Anni arrive among people who are not uniformly welcoming, while Anni’s refugee identity shapes the wartime social setting. The book takes a critical view of this.
- Art, music and wartime work: The mission involves protecting priceless artworks in a Welsh slate mine, while the story also presents art and music as ways people can come together. Art and music are treated positively as valuable cultural forces, alongside the practical wartime labour needed to protect artworks.
- Worth knowing
- Be ready for secrecy, suspicion, wartime danger and hostility towards newcomers, alongside discussion of a Jewish refugee’s experience and the effects of loved ones being missing in action.