Episode At Toledo
In the beautiful countryside of Portugal, erstwhile British secret agent Julia Probyn is to attend a royal wedding. But her former acquaintance, Countess Hetta Páloczy, the young Hungarian refugee, unwittingly gets them both tangled in Cold War intrigue. After Hetta accidentally uncovers a Communist plot to assassinate an American admiral in Spain, she is a marked woman yet again and must flee to Portugal. But even in the tranquil beauty of Gralheira, peril lurks. Unluckily for the assassins, these women are no strangers to danger.
In The Episode at Toledo, book six in the series, Julia is joined by Hetta and Luzia, uniting all our heroines from The Julia Probyn Mysteries.
Ann Bridge (1889-1974), or Lady Mary Dolling (Sanders) O'Malley was born in Hertfordshire. Bridge's novels concern her experiences of the British Foreign Office community in Peking in China, where she lived for two years with her diplomat husband. Her novels combine courtship plots with vividly-realized settings and demure social satire.
Bridge went on to write novels around a serious investigation of modern historical developments. In the 1970s Bridge began to write thrillers centered on a female amateur detective, Julia Probyn, as well writing travel books and family memoirs. Her books were praised for their faithful representation of foreign countries which was down to personal experience and thorough research.