Death in Focus

April 1, 2019

In this series starter, set in pre-World War II Europe, late-twenties Elena Standish falls for Ian while vacationing in Italy and travels back to England with him. When tragedy strikes, Elena alone must deliver a key message to Berlin, even as her diplomat father and her grandfather (once secretly the head of MI6) make trouble on the world stage.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 22, 2019
In 1933, British photographer Elena Standish, the heroine of this promising series launch from bestseller Perry (the William Monk series), travels to Amalfi, Italy, to take pictures of delegates to an economic conference. One night at her hotel, Elena and a fellow countryman she meets on the trip, Ian Newton, investigate after hearing a maid cry out. The maid has found a man’s body in a hotel room. Elena is skeptical when Ian, who says he’s a sometime economic journalist, nervously denies he knows the murdered man. Nonetheless, she finds herself falling for Ian, and when he gets an urgent summons to leave Amalfi, she agrees to accompany him on part of his journey. After violence strikes again, Ian reveals that he works for MI6 and he’s trying to prevent the murder of a German admiral in Berlin, a crime the plotters hope to pin on the British. Circumstances compel Elena to take an active role in his mission. Readers will root for the forceful, independent Elena, who will appeal to Maisie Dobbs fans. Perry knows how to ratchet up the international intrigue. Agent: Donald Maass, Donald Maass Literary.

July 15, 2019
Perry (Triple Jeopardy, 2019, etc.) kicks off her latest series by sending an English photographer who ought to know better into Nazi Germany in 1933. Elena Standish may be four years younger than her more worldly sister, Margot, who was widowed by the Great War only a week into her marriage, but her grandfather Lucas Standish was secretly head of MI6 during the war; her isolationist father, Charles Standish, served by turns as England's ambassador to Germany, France, and Spain; and she learned the bitter taste of betrayal from Aiden Strother, the beau who turned on both her and her country. So you'd think she'd know a thing or two about how to deal with tricky situations--and in her own way, she does. When Ian Newton, an attentive economic journalist she's met in Amalfi, is stabbed to death during their train journey from Milan to Paris and alerts her as he's dying that he's an MI6 agent who's learned of a plot to assassinate Hitler ally Friedrich Scharnhorst during a rally in Berlin, she instantly accepts the responsibility of passing on his warning to Roger Cordell at the British Embassy there. Elena has no way of knowing that Peter Howard, Lucas' friend who's still active in MI6, suspects Cordell of being a turncoat. Only after Scharnhorst is felled by a sniper's bullet as Elena is snapping his picture and she returns to her hotel to find the murder weapon stashed in her wardrobe does she realize that whoever killed Scharnhorst intended to frame Ian and is now perfectly willing to frame her. Going on the run, she plunges into a dark world in which it's impossible to know whom to trust, who'll help her escape, and who'll turn her over to the Gestapo. Although her adventures, which improbably continue after she's placed under arrest, come fast enough to cause whiplash, most readers will figure out long before Elena who's most directly responsible for her peril. Sturdy woman-on-the-run period intrigue with a strong rooting interest and a weak ending.

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Starred review from August 1, 2019
Vacationing with her sister in pre-WWII Italy, photographer Elena Standish falls in love and impulsively accompanies her new boyfriend, Ian, to Paris, from where she will return home to England. Just before leaving, Elena finds a murder victim in her hotel, a tragedy that sets the stage for more deaths. En route to Paris by train, Ian is also killed, leaving Elena to deliver his dying-breath message, which will help foil a plan to frame Britain for the killing of a Nazi leader. Elena's many narrow escapes and Perry's immersive re-creation of Nazi-era Europe will keep readers enthralled by this series debut. The numerous characters working behind the scenes both for and against Elena?her beloved grandfather, for example, who is the former head of MI6?are well drawn, but it is the smart, gritty heroine herself who will ensure that readers eagerly anticipate the next in the series. In the meantime, those looking for read-alikes could try some of Perry's WWI-set titles, such as No Graves as Yet (2003) and Shoulder the Sky (2004).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)