Deep Night

October 6, 2008
Reconnecting with beautiful antiques dealer Leah Kolbe and her fiancé, Jonathan Hawatyne, Petit's sequel to The Fat Man's Daughter
opens with a scene of Hong Kong splendor, complete with Ernest Hemingway at the Peninsula Hotel, setting the stage for the loss to come when the start of the second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 sends Jonathan into battle—right in the middle of a movie date. Heart-broken, Leah prepares for starvation on watery congee, but after Hong Kong surrenders manages to escape by boat. Landing in Macau's with nothing, she finds work with the British Consulate and then is recruited by a man named Benjamin Eldersen to get close to a Japanese businessman, the son of an ammunition and steel manufacturer. Espionage hijinx ensue, and Jonathan's gone missing. Throughout, readers are meant to feel Leah's anguish for Jonathan, but her interior life remains stubbornly two-dimensional. Still, the melodrama pulls readers through the streets of Hong Kong and Macau during a tempestuous period, making this war-time romantic suspenser a pleasant enough escape.

December 15, 2008
Leah Kolbe is a survivorprovided that she can make the right connections. Somehow, she always does. In Japanese-occupied Hong Kong on the eve of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Leah uses her intellect, her upper-class acquaintances, and her body to stay alive. When her soldier fiancé is missing on the battlefield and her inherited antiques business is destroyed, Leah must flee to Macau to escape the advancing Japanese. Putting herself in dangerous situations as a British spy and then as the lover of a Japanese businessman, Leah manages to scrape along while others around her are dying. She has no remorse for the things she does but finds that her actions will forever change the course of her future. Although Leah's hard exterior and no-nonsense attitude make her difficult to sympathize with, readers will find themselves engrossed enough to see what happens next. With this sequel to "The Fat Man's Daughter", Petit presents an alternate view of the horrors of war for those left behind. Recommended for libraries where Petit's first book and intrigue and spy novels are popular. [See Prepub Mystery, "LJ" 8/08.]Leann Restaino, Girard, OH

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2008
Leah Kolbe, who took over her late fathers antique business in Hong Kong in Petits debut novel, The Fat Mans Daughter (2006), once again proves herself a survivor, this time during the Sino-Japanese War. Before she accepts longtime lover Jonathan Hawatynes proposal of marriage, she is recruited to gather intelligenceby seduction, if necessaryfrom Tokai Ito, son of a Japanese steel magnate. Then comes the attack on Pearl Harbor: Jonathan is called to military service, Britain declares war on Japan, and Leah flees to Macau. Hired to assist the British consul there, she embarks on an affair with Ito that compromises her safety, and she becomes involved with two other dangerous men from her past: Chang, to whom she passes military intelligence, and Vasiliev, with a new identity as a Brit. With insufficient background about some recurring characters, this is more successful as a sequel than a stand-alone; still, itsa colorful portrayal of the cruelty and deprivation of war, its peppered with vividly portrayed historical personages (among them newly married Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn), and it stars a plucky protagonist who continues to land on her feet.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)