His Majesty's Hope

March 25, 2013
Contrivances weaken MacNeal’s third Maggie Hope mystery set during WWII (after 2012’s Princess Elizabeth’s Spy). Maggie, who began the series as secretary to Winston Churchill, has evolved by 1941 into a top agent for Britain’s Special Operations Executive. At the request of Churchill himself, she embarks on a risky mission as “the first woman dropped behind enemy lines” since the start of the war. Besides delivering a radio part to a resistance group in Berlin, she must try to plant a bug at the home of Commandant Clara Hess, the German intelligence officer responsible for the nefarious Nazi plot in the previous book. That Hope keeps secret from the S.O.E. director her special connection to Hess adds an element of soap opera. A light spy thriller with thin characterizations and situations that never realize their full dramatic potential. Agent: Victoria Skurnick, Levine Greenberg Literary.

April 15, 2013
A dangerous trip to Berlin becomes a life-altering experience for a British spy. Maggie Hope is a Brit raised by an aunt in America who returned to London, where she learned many things about the supposedly dead parents she barely knew. Her father is a scientist working to break German codes, her mother a Nazi agent whom Maggie outwitted in her last adventure (Princess Elizabeth's Spy, 2012). Now she has undergone rigorous training to be sent to Germany, where her quick wits and excellent German just may let her pull off a dangerous mission. She is parachuted into Germany, where she is posing as the girlfriend of Gottlieb Lerner, a Nazi who is really a devout Catholic involved with local priests working to thwart Nazi plans. Her job: deliver radio crystals and plant a microphone in the home office of her mother, Clara Hess. Maggie meets her half sister Elise, a nurse who has recently discovered that the government is busily carrying out their secret plan of race purification by killing children and others whom they consider defective in any way. Elise is boldly hiding a British pilot and the Jewish husband of a fellow nurse in her mother's attic while working to find proof of the mass killings. When Maggie gets a chance to work for a Nazi involved in the program, a horrified Lerner tries to get her to return to Britain, but Maggie is determined to get proof that the program exists. Maggie continues her winning ways with more thrills and romantic problems, but this time, the horrors of her experiences add depth to the already pleasing adventures.

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Starred review from May 1, 2013
In 1941, Maggie Hope, the first female agent to be dropped behind enemy lines, is sent to bug the home office of Clara Hess, the high-ranking Nazi operative who's also Maggie's estranged mother. But without her knowledge, Maggie also is intended to serve as bait to bring in Hess, whose recent operations in Englandintended to kill Winston Churchill and to kidnap Princess Elizabethwere foiled largely by Maggie. In Berlin, she also meets nurse Elise Hess, the half-sister she never knew she had, who has just been stunned by viewing Operation Compassionate Death, the mass killings of children with disabilities. When an opportunity to stay in Berlin beyond the completion of her mission presents itself, Maggie seizes the chance to gather additional intelligence, putting herself and her contact in the German Resistance at risk. Historical reality makes the third in this meticulously researched series darker in tone but just as compellingly readable as its predecessors (Mr. Churchill's Secretary and Princess Elizabeth's Spy, both 2012); viewing WWII through Maggie's exploits provides an intriguingly human perspective on the era.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)