Mr. Churchill's Secretary: A Maggie Hope Mystery Paperback Author: Visit Amazon's Susan Elia MacNeal Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0553593617 | Format: PDF, EPUB
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Review
Advance praise for Mr. Churchill's Secretary“This wonderful debut is intelligent, richly detailed, and filled with suspense.”—Stefanie Pintoff
“A terrific read . . . Chock full of fascinating period details and real people including Winston Churchill, MacNeal’s fast-paced thriller gives a glimpse of the struggles, tensions, and dangers of life on the home front during World War II.”—Rhys Bowen, author of
Royal Blood and winner of the Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards
“Think early Ken Follett, amp it up with a whipsmart young American not averse to red lipstick and vintage cocktails, season it with espionage during the London Blitz, and you’ve got a heart-pounding, atmospheric debut. I loved it.”—Cara Black, author of
Murder in Passy “England in 1940 is the perfect backdrop for a courageous young woman who outwits the enemy. A vivid tapestry of wartime London.”—Carolyn Hart, author of
Escape from Paris“An engrossing page-turner, with a delightful and spirited new heroine in the aptly named Maggie Hope.”—C. C. Benison, author of
Twelve Drummers Drumming About the Author
Susan Elia MacNeal is the author of the Maggie Hope mysteries, including her debut novel, M
r. Churchill’s Secretary, and the upcoming
Princess Elizabeth’s Spy. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and child.
Direct download links available for Download Mr. Churchill's Secretary: A Maggie Hope Mystery Paperback
- Paperback: 384 pages
- Publisher: Bantam; Later Printing edition (April 3, 2012)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0553593617
- ISBN-13: 978-0553593617
- Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
- Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Maggie was supposed to be at MIT earning a graduate degree in advanced mathematics, but instead finds herself in WWII London trying to sell the rundown but elegant house she inherited from a grandmother she had never known. Born in England to British parents, Maggie hadn't been back since she was a baby, which was when she left to live in America with her aunt after her parents were killed in a car accident. At first the blip in her academic plans felt like an annoying roadblock, but after living in and enjoying London for a year, and with the war now started, she decides to stay and do her part. And after all, even with rations, blackouts and air raids, life goes on and most of the time is anything but grim. There's dancing, theater, good friends, and great housemates, including Paige, her longtime friend from home, Sarah, a ballerina who gets them all tickets to her shows and Charlotte, known as Chuck, who has a boyfriend in the RAF. Plus there's the job Maggie has gotten as secretary to Winston Churchill. Of course Maggie, with her knowledge of mathematics, languages, and codes, is qualified for much more than typing and filing, but women are excluded from that kind of work and at least she is contributing to the cause from a front row seat.
Author Susan Elia MacNeal is very good at crafting the right details to capture a scene and set a mood, and as Maggie's intellectual skills inevitably lead her to become more and more involved in secret and dangerous war work the pace of the novel accelerates until it is almost impossible to put down. It is mainly Maggie's story, but there are multiple points of view and in the early part of the novel it took a little vigilance to keep all the characters straight.
I quite enjoyed this book, with its engaging main character, Maggie Hope, a British-born American who, while closing her deceased grandmother's house, is caught in London by the outbreak of World War II. With time, I think that the Maggie mysteries could develop into a very good series, indeed. The author's handling of the various strands of the plot is clever, although she sometimes tipped her hand in planting false clues that seemed a bit obvious, inviting readerly speculation prematurely. Some episodes, however, called for a severe suspension of disbelief, as when it doesn't seem to occur to Maggie, the bright young mathematician, that the simple morse she is decoding, which initially makes no sense, might actually be in the language of the main enemy that the world is fighting, Nazi Germany--especially when she later proves to be fluent in German.
The 'meticulous research'--advertised in Bantam's blurbs--needs to be toned down and incorporated seamlessly into the narrative so that one barely notices it, because the history-mystery genre represents a minefield, in which one false step will cause the story to explode in the reader's face, which is what I felt happened about half-way through the book, when the narrative began to lose its credibility.
Such 'explosions' occur when the author trips over anachronisms that betray that she is not really at home in the British world, at least historically. One such has been noted by another reviewer, who observed that women (i.e., 'Aunt Edith') were not awarded Cambridge degrees until 1947.
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