The Lusitania Code
A Lady Butterschloss Mystery
Published on 17. February 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
320 pages
979-8-89820-133-3 (ISBN)
Description
Lady Emmeline "Foxy" Butterschloss lives in self-imposed isolation on her country estate. She is haunted by her experiences six years earlier as an ambulance driver on the Western Front and the loss of her husband during the war. After her war work in France, she spent the rest of the war as a gifted cryptologist for the Royal Navy. However, the veil of secrecy drawn over her work and that of other women in naval intelligence makes her feel useless and discarded in the war's aftermath.
She is pulled back to the world of intelligence when the top-secret records of the sinking of the Lusitania suddenly disappear, and someone tries to kill her adult adopted son, who was the last person to see the files.
Foxy rediscovers her indomitable-if often impetuous-will and deploys her considerable skills as a sharpshooter and a cryptologist to rescue Dinny and his friends from the dangerous world of political intrigue and espionage. Winston Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty in 1915, when a German submarine torpedo sank the Lusitania. Powerful people do not want the damning secrets in the Lusitania files to emerge on the eve of Churchill's run for Parliament in 1924. Foxy also solves the murder of a whistleblower who was about to expose a plot by MI5 and Conservative party leaders to smear the Labour Prime Minister as a stooge for the Soviet Union. As she investigates both mysteries, Foxy realizes sinister forces are at work and her life is in danger. Can the man who has secretly loved her for decades protect her? And can she learn to love again before it is too late?
More details
Person
Linda Robertson's headstrong and intelligent character, Lady Emmeline "Foxy" Butterschloss, is an inevitable result of her interest in how politics, propaganda, and power are reflected in popular culture. Linda founded the Media and Society Program at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in 1996, making it the oldest program at a liberal arts college in the United States devoted to examining the influence of the mass media on society. She has co-hosted a weekly, very popular local public radio program, featuring lively banter and serious analysis of the press and politics. Linda has produced several historical documentaries about the role of abolitionists in upstate New York and a feature-length documentary recounting the collaboration between Harriet Tubman and her biographer, Sarah Bradford: Daughters of the New Republic: Sarah Bradford and Harriet Tubman (2016). The Lusitania Code is Robertson's first venture into fiction, bringing to life the turbulent period after World War I, when British politicians, spies, intelligence officers, and newspaper magnates sought control over the forces shaping the broken post-war world. If it wasn't the first time political cover-ups and "fake news" were used to distort history and influence elections, it was the time when these techniques were polished and refined. Robertson not only brings these forces to light in a dramatic and often amusing narrative, but she also honors the forgotten women who were codebreakers for the British Royal Navy during World War I. Dismissed by history as "typists," these were highly educated women who used the first mechanized decoding machines to help the Admiralty decipher both the German military and diplomatic codes during World War I. Linda is retired and lives in a small village in upstate New York with her amazing Maine Coon cat, Nokia. She relaxes by painting with watercolor, enjoys the company of fellow writers who meet virtually each week, and is the designated straggler in the local hiking club whose members explore the many scenic trails and natural wonders in the vicinity of Ithaca, New York.