The War Photographers, SL Beaumont

From the blurb:

1943 – Bletchley Park, England

Mae Webster, immersed in the clandestine world of codebreaking at Bletchley Park, is recruited to help unveil a spy who’s on the brink of exposing Britain's most guarded secret, the cracking of the Enigma code. As war rages around her, Mae's life takes an unexpected turn when she falls in love with the enigmatic New Zealand war photographer Jack Knight. Their relationship develops at pace, but tragedy strikes when one of Jack's photographs risks unmasking an elusive double agent. 

1989 – Berlin, Germany

Rachel Talbot, a globetrotting photojournalist, ventures into the heart of a fractured Berlin in search of the Stasi officer whom her beloved grandmother Mae blames for betraying their family. Rachel finds herself entangled in the East German uprising and is irresistibly drawn to a charismatic activist. As the Cold War threatens to boil over, Rachel races to expose a traitor before it’s too late.

A dual timeline mystery centred around Rachel Talbot's investigations into the story of her grandmother's time at Bletchley Park, the death of her grandfather, Mae's husband Jack, and the man who had been a mole in the war, defecting to the Stasi afterwards. Given that the second timeline is 1989, in Germany the reader is taken into a time of great tumult in East Berlin in particular, as protests start up that eventually lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Rachel is there trying to find the truth about the events in 1943 and beyond though, and she is attempting to do that under an oppressive and increasingly panicked regime, which leads to some tense moments and very realistic threats.

Backed by two distinct historical points in time, THE WAR PHOTOGRAPHERS is full of details and realistic moments, that illuminate a plot that's cleverly outlined. Both the timelines here work individually and in the cross over. The blend of fictional events in a real setting works and overall the ideas behind this novel are extremely believable. Helped by some excellent characterisations, and some nicely twisty misdirection, THE WAR PHOTOGRAPHS is a really good historical mystery novel that should appeal to people who like that sort of timeline, and those new to the idea.