Pip: There is a detective agency forming somewhere in 1920s London, and we have been given the files before anyone else.
Mara: Lucy Cordell is building out the world of detective156 — characters, backstory, atmosphere. Today we’re looking at who these people are and what makes them worth following into the fog.
Pip: Let’s start with the woman at the centre of it all.
Building up the Characters of the story!!
Pip: The question this post is really answering is: who exactly is Leila Voss, and why should we trust her to solve anything in 1920s London?
Mara: The post frames her as someone shaped by two worlds from the start — and here is the line that sets the tone: “witty, sharp, puzzle loving, super observant.”
Pip: Four words, and you already know this is not a character who stumbles into answers. Those traits are a deliberate design — she is built to notice what everyone else misses.
Mara: The background fills that out considerably. Her father Surgid is a decorated Admiral with Norwegian roots who also serves as a secret adviser. Her mother Ingrid is an Intelligence Secretary. Her brother Elias moves through the Royal Engineers into Corp Intelligence. This is a family where information is the family business.
Pip: So Leila did not wander into detective work — she was practically raised inside the infrastructure of it. The boarding school detail is quietly telling too: both she and Elias excelled and left at sixteen, which in the 1920s says a great deal about how seriously this family took capability over convention.
Mara: Her early career begins as a secretary in London — which, given everything we know about her family, reads less like a modest start and more like someone learning the city from the inside before setting up Leila Voss and Associates Detectives at Number 7 Clay Street, Marylebone.
Pip: A Marylebone address, naturally. The fog practically comes with the postcode.
Mara: The post also previews two colleagues — Josh Thorne, described as loyal and protective, and Pete Smith, a charming master of disguise. The post is explicit that fuller profiles for both are coming, so this is genuinely a first chapter in a longer character-building series.
Pip: What this post does well is resist the urge to over-explain. It gives you the skeleton and trusts you to want the rest.
Mara: The atmosphere is already doing real work — 1920s London, a family steeped in intelligence, a detective agency just getting its name on the door.
Pip: Which means the mysteries themselves are still ahead of us.
Mara: The world of detective156 is still assembling itself — characters arriving, addresses confirmed, secrets flagged but not yet opened.
Pip: Foggy London, a sharp detective, and a family full of classified history. Next time, more of the same — and probably a disguise.
