London, 1940. Winston Churchill has just been sworn in, war rages across the Channel, and the threat of a Blitz looms larger by the day. But none of this deters Maggie Hope. She graduated at the top of her college class and possesses all the skills of the finest minds in British intelligence, but her gender qualifies her only to be the newest typist at No. 10 Downing Street. Her indefatigable spirit and remarkable gifts for codebreaking, though, rival those of even the highest men in government, and Maggie finds that working for the prime minister affords her a level of clearance she could never have imagined—and opportunities she will not let pass. In troubled, deadly times, with air-raid sirens sending multitudes underground, access to the War Rooms also exposes Maggie to the machinations of a menacing faction determined to do whatever it takes to change the course of history.
Ensnared in a web of spies, murder, and intrigue, Maggie must work quickly to balance her duty to King and Country with her chances for survival. And when she unravels a mystery that points toward her own family’s hidden secrets, she’ll discover that her quick wits are all that stand between an assassin’s murderous plan and Churchill himself.
Mr. Churchill's Secretary is the first book in the Maggie Hope Mystery series by Susan Elia MacNeal. it was published April 3, 2012, by Bantam Books.
I chose this title for our mystery book club for April of this year (the mass market paperback came out in 2023).
Normally, I am on the fence regarding historical fiction - especially ones set during World War II. However, MacNeal's wonderfully vivid descriptions and snappy dialogue instantly hooked me. I was quickly immersed in her world of wartime London. There is a lot of world-building at the start, setting up Maggie's environments, friends and co-workers; so it takes a good bit for the intrigue to kick into a steady pace.
With all the interplay between the supporting cast, at times it felt like a CW television show (i.e. smart twenty-somethings) set in a historical location. Again, something I am totally good with as I admittedly watch(ed) a lot of those types of shows. The mystery was a little lighter than I hoped, and, thanks to the third-person narration chosen, I was often clued in to more of what was going on than some of our protagonist characters.
Where the writing and story broke down is when the action started in the final third of the book. It seemed like every time characters were in a tense situation, the air raid sirens would sound and defuse everything. Or, when chapters would jump back and forth at cliffhanging moments that ended up killing the tension. Those kinds of cuts might work well for TV or a movie, but they did not work here.
In summary, it had potential but then ended up coming up short.
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