Mrs. Roosevelt's Confidante

September 7, 2015
MacNeal’s enthralling fifth Maggie Hope mystery (after The Prime Minister’s Secret Agent) takes the American-born British spy to Washington, D.C., in the company of Winston Churchill, posing as his typist, for a meeting with F.D.R. just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. When Eleanor Roosevelt’s temporary secretary, Blanche Balfour, fails to show up for work, Maggie winds up accompanying the First Lady to Blanche’s apartment, where they discover her body and a note implicating Eleanor Roosevelt herself as the reason for her (apparent) suicide. Not only does Maggie try to prevent a scandal that has implications for the presidency and the war, she also assists in the First Lady’s efforts to help Wendell Cotton, a poor African-American sentenced to die by an all-white Virginia jury. While Maggie is the star, MacNeal gives ample space to the political maneuverings of Roosevelt and Churchill. Cameo appearances by such historical figures as Martha Gellhorn, C.S. Forester, and Walt Disney add to the fun. Agent: Victoria Skurnick, Levine Greenberg Literary.

August 15, 2015
In 1941, Christmas offers hope for a beleaguered Great Britain but no peace for an English spy. Now that Japan has attacked the U.S., President Franklin Delano Roosevelt can declare war on the Axis, and Winston Churchill has made a secret trip to Washington to discuss strategy. After starting as Churchill's secretary, brilliant math major Maggie Hope has graduated to become an accomplished spy. Raised in Boston by her American aunt after the supposed deaths of her parents, she now knows that her father is a codebreaker for Great Britain and her mother's a Nazi spy imprisoned in England. Arriving at the White House, she's sucked into helping Eleanor Roosevelt when they go check up on Mrs. Roosevelt's missing secretary, Blanche Balfour, a Southern belle whose boyfriend is urging her to help him create a scandal. Maggie and Eleanor find Blanche dead in her bathtub, her wrists slit. The setup screams suicide, but Maggie is suspicious enough to remove a writing pad from Blanche's room. Judicious use of a pencil shows that a letter written on the pad accused Eleanor of trying to kiss Blanche. Maggie also becomes involved in the cause of Wendell Cotton, a black man on death row in Virginia, whom an all-white jury has convicted of murder and sentenced to die. Mrs. Roosevelt is eager to save him, but her husband refuses to interfere because he needs Southern support for the war effort. While Churchill and Roosevelt huddle, Maggie's former lover, Flight Lt. John Sterling, another of Churchill's aides, is sent to California to drum up publicity and work with Walt Disney on a cartoon Sterling created. Maggie remains in D.C., assisted by a reporter who was once her old college friend, to wrestle with Blanche's murder and Cotton's fate. MacNeal (The Prime Minister's Secret Agent, 2014, etc.) paints an engrossing portrait of a country on the verge of war, with many laws suspended and prejudice rife-a world not that much different from today.

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September 15, 2015
Maggie Hope is delighted to be back in America in mid-December 1941: it's her home country, and it isn't enduring London's rationing. At 26, Maggie is a British spy posing as a secretary to Winston Churchill when the Boss visits President Franklin Roosevelt to confirm America's dedication to the war in Europe. When Eleanor Roosevelt worries about the absence of her private secretary, Blanche Balfour, the PM offers Maggie, a woman of many talents, to assist her. They find Blanche dead in a murder staged as a suicide, with evidence of a note accusing the First Lady of sexual misconduct. Maggie also becomes involved in trying to stop the pending execution of a poor black sharecropper in Virginia who received a mockery of a trial. All of which delays a private meeting with her almost-fiance, RAF pilot John Sterling, who was shot down over Germany in 1940 and is now on Churchill's staff. MacNeal's fifth Maggie Hope mystery (after The Prime Minister's Secret Agent, 2014) is another solidly researched entry with the indomitable Maggie in top form. Thoroughly entertaining historical mystery.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)