Having really enjoyed reading Corpus, the first in the Professor Tom Wilde series, I took Nucleus by Rory Clements for some holiday reading when I finally went abroad post-Covid, to a Pilates retreat in Fuerteventura.

This one picks up with Tom and Lydia in April 1939, when Tom has returned from a trip to America to see his mother and to do a book tour (where he is also summonsed to the White House for a word with Roosevelt). Lydia, meanwhile has been in London helping to organise the kinder transport to get Jewish children out of Germany before it is too late. Each of them are slightly resentful of the other’s decision that has led to their time apart.

They are both soon drawn into intrigue in pre-war Cambridge, as IRA plots unfold, more dodgy aristocrats are up to no good in a nearby stately home and there is a race to keep the nuclear secrets of the Cavendish Lab in Cambridge safe.

Lydia embarks on a dangerous journey to Berlin, whilst Tom finds himself flying to breakfast in Paris with a film star. Both are trying to find a missing child, apparently taken off the kinder transport en route to England.

The body-rate rises alarmingly as the book progresses. Will Tom and Lydia manage to save the child, save themselves and save British secrets? You’ll just have to read to find out.