Staff Reviews

This is the first in the Maggie Hope series set in WWII.  Maggie is a Brit raised in America, she fills a variety of roles during WWII, giving each book a different aspect of that era to portray. 

Maggie plans to begin studying at M.I.T. for her doctorate in math when she gets the startling news that she has inherited a house in London from a grandmother she didn’t know existed.  Raised from infancy by her Aunt Edith, a professor at Wellesley, details about her family have been parceled out infrequently and are sketchy at best.  Now there is a house to sell, the funds should help with expenses at M.I.T. and Maggie is being dispatched to London to handle the sale.  Things, as is often the case, do not go as expected.  The house fails to sell and Germany starts gobbling up Europe.  Instead of returning to the US, Maggie finds a few flat mates and stays, much to the consternation of her aunt. 

The position of Churchill’s secretary opens due to a murder.  A typist is killed on her way home after work.  Maggie’s friend David, one of Churchill’s secretaries prevails upon her to take the job of typist.  Never mind that Maggie is highly educated and speaks German and French, she is female and the secretaries, for the time being, are men.   Those who have read Erik Larson’s excellent non-fiction The Splendid and the Vile, will be familiar with Churchill’s penchant for calling people and things by inventive monikers and will find a passage near the beginning of Maggie’s tenure with the brilliant Churchill hilarious.

Of course, the killing of the typist will be more than random, family secrets are uncovered, and Maggie will find herself in grave danger.  A gallop of a book that will leave you wanting to read about Maggie’s next posting during WWII.