Another adventure for plucky Maggie Hope. ( )

The latest Maggie Hope book reunites Maggie with her first love, John, in California, where the nationalistic fervor and racial tension of the 1940s seems an eerie echo of today’s news. Maggie has grown over the past books as her idealism has taken a few body blows, but has discovered that she has negotiating power and more control over her destiny than she thought. Great book that makes you worry about history repeating itself!

Thanks to Random House for a digital ARC via NetGalley.

Readers of the Maggie Hope Mystery series by Susan Elia MacNeil, are in for a real treat. Maggie's loyal followers have been through the emotional ringer with Maggie as she's gone from clever math whiz and code breaker, through aide to Churchill, high-end nanny, secret agent, security liability to bomb defuser. She's been shot at, maimed and somehow she always comes back for more.

In this installment, it's the summer of 1943 and former RAF pilot (and Maggie's former paramour), John Sterling, reaches out to Maggie, asking her to leave London and come to Los Angeles to investigate the death of his fiancé. Even though authorities have called it an "accident", John is suspicious of their conclusion and asks Maggie to lead an independent investigation. Maggie gets right down to business and finds one lead after another.

The writing is spectacular, the attention to the historic record - spot on and the setting, highly atmospheric. The glamour and behind the scenes seediness are explored as well as the societal upheaval of that summer. Segregation is rampant at the same time in which Armericans are called to unify against the axis powers. The race riots are happening all over the country. American Naziism has gone underground and was consorting to upset the tentative peace in the valley. There's also a lot of name dropping as famous folks make their cameo appearances throughout the story.

Again, we readers are on an emotional rollercoaster ride with Maggie. The gears of her mind are cranking away a mile a minute as she tears through the streets of Los Angeles. We are white-knuckling it right beside her for the entire ride. It's not long before it's fairly obvious who's been killing off folks. But in spite of the early reveal, the writing is too good to gloss over and I devoured the the story right through to the end. It was a satisfying conclusion to yet another wonderful adventure with Ms. Hope. ( )

Lots of good research, no doubt supported by a junket-like visit to current LA support this unusual site for spy activity. Fascism, even Nazism was rampant in the US prior to and during WW2, and MacNeal colors this story such with its manifestations that the plot becomes almost a connect the dots activity. Maggie carries through at the end and tees up a trip to Madrid for the next episode. Not the best in this fun series but worth a read. ( )

A likeable, smart, and very capable heroine - whether in wartime London, Paris, Washington DC, or now in sunny 1943 Hollywood - Maggie Hope makes any novel in the series a page-turner. I had only read the first one ("Mr. Churchill's Secretary"), and now this one, and find that it can be read as a stand-alone. But more than likely you'll want to go back and read the others (as I hope to do) because these stories have just the right amount of mystery to thriller ratio, combined with the historical sense of time and place.

World War II and Hollywood aren't a common pairing, so this was a fresh perspective that made the book all the more readable. Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan are the bad guys, and as Maggie's ex-fiancée John Sterling says, "L.A. looks like paradise, but it's just as dark as anywhere else." Maggie is there at John's request to solve a murder, and she discovers spies and double spies, racists, plots of destruction, as well as many of the big name stars of the day.

It is clear the author did her research and it brought that era to life - from the weather and smog, the Hollywood glamor, fashion, music, and celebrities. I liked how the themes of Hollywood's illusion vs. reality are observed throughout the story, as well as how popular movie quotes are inserted into the dialogue. If you're looking for a World War II novel that foregoes London's Blitz for sunshine, with a brilliant heroine whose investigations will keep you on the edge of your seat, this is the book for you. ( )