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Bezig met laden... The Hollywood Spydoor Susan Elia MacNeal
Books Read in 2021 (4,963) Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. Another adventure for plucky Maggie Hope. ( ) The latest Maggie Hope book reunites Maggie with her first love, John, in California, where the nationalistic fervor and racial tension of the 1940s seems an eerie echo of today’s news. Maggie has grown over the past books as her idealism has taken a few body blows, but has discovered that she has negotiating power and more control over her destiny than she thought. Great book that makes you worry about history repeating itself! Thanks to Random House for a digital ARC via NetGalley. Readers of the Maggie Hope Mystery series by Susan Elia MacNeil, are in for a real treat. Maggie's loyal followers have been through the emotional ringer with Maggie as she's gone from clever math whiz and code breaker, through aide to Churchill, high-end nanny, secret agent, security liability to bomb defuser. She's been shot at, maimed and somehow she always comes back for more. In this installment, it's the summer of 1943 and former RAF pilot (and Maggie's former paramour), John Sterling, reaches out to Maggie, asking her to leave London and come to Los Angeles to investigate the death of his fiancé. Even though authorities have called it an "accident", John is suspicious of their conclusion and asks Maggie to lead an independent investigation. Maggie gets right down to business and finds one lead after another. The writing is spectacular, the attention to the historic record - spot on and the setting, highly atmospheric. The glamour and behind the scenes seediness are explored as well as the societal upheaval of that summer. Segregation is rampant at the same time in which Armericans are called to unify against the axis powers. The race riots are happening all over the country. American Naziism has gone underground and was consorting to upset the tentative peace in the valley. There's also a lot of name dropping as famous folks make their cameo appearances throughout the story. Again, we readers are on an emotional rollercoaster ride with Maggie. The gears of her mind are cranking away a mile a minute as she tears through the streets of Los Angeles. We are white-knuckling it right beside her for the entire ride. It's not long before it's fairly obvious who's been killing off folks. But in spite of the early reveal, the writing is too good to gloss over and I devoured the the story right through to the end. It was a satisfying conclusion to yet another wonderful adventure with Ms. Hope. Lots of good research, no doubt supported by a junket-like visit to current LA support this unusual site for spy activity. Fascism, even Nazism was rampant in the US prior to and during WW2, and MacNeal colors this story such with its manifestations that the plot becomes almost a connect the dots activity. Maggie carries through at the end and tees up a trip to Madrid for the next episode. Not the best in this fun series but worth a read. A likeable, smart, and very capable heroine - whether in wartime London, Paris, Washington DC, or now in sunny 1943 Hollywood - Maggie Hope makes any novel in the series a page-turner. I had only read the first one ("Mr. Churchill's Secretary"), and now this one, and find that it can be read as a stand-alone. But more than likely you'll want to go back and read the others (as I hope to do) because these stories have just the right amount of mystery to thriller ratio, combined with the historical sense of time and place. World War II and Hollywood aren't a common pairing, so this was a fresh perspective that made the book all the more readable. Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan are the bad guys, and as Maggie's ex-fiancée John Sterling says, "L.A. looks like paradise, but it's just as dark as anywhere else." Maggie is there at John's request to solve a murder, and she discovers spies and double spies, racists, plots of destruction, as well as many of the big name stars of the day. It is clear the author did her research and it brought that era to life - from the weather and smog, the Hollywood glamor, fashion, music, and celebrities. I liked how the themes of Hollywood's illusion vs. reality are observed throughout the story, as well as how popular movie quotes are inserted into the dialogue. If you're looking for a World War II novel that foregoes London's Blitz for sunshine, with a brilliant heroine whose investigations will keep you on the edge of your seat, this is the book for you. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
Onderdeel van de reeks(en)Maggie Hope (10)
Fiction.
Mystery.
Thriller.
Historical Fiction.
HTML:Maggie Hope is off to California to solve a crime that hits too close to home??and to confront the very evil she thought she had left behind in Europe??as the acclaimed World War II mystery series from New York Times bestselling author Susan Elia MacNeal continues. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL ? ??An absolute triumph . . . Maggie Hope is irresistible.???Hilary Davidson, author of Her Last Breath Los Angeles, 1943. As the Allies beat back the Nazis in the Mediterranean and the United States military slowly closes in on Tokyo, Walt Disney cranks out wartime propaganda and the Cocoanut Grove is alive with jazz and swing every night. But behind this sunny façade lies a darker reality. Up in the lush foothills of Hollywood, a woman floats lifeless in the pool of one of California??s trendiest hotels. When American-born secret agent and British spy Maggie Hope learns that this woman was engaged to her former fiancée, John Sterling, and that he suspects her death was no accident, intuition tells her he??s right. Leaving London under siege is a lot to ask??but John was once the love of Maggie??s life . . . and she can??t say no. Maggie struggles with seeing her lost love again, but more shocking is the realization that her country is as divided and convulsed with hatred as Europe. The Zoot Suit Riots loom large in Los Angeles, and the Ku Klux Klan casts a long shadow everywhere. But there is little time to dwell on memories once she starts digging into the case. As she traces a web of deception from the infamous Garden of Allah to the iconic Carthay Circle Theater, she discovers things aren??t always the way things appear in the movies??and the political situation in America is more complicated, and dangerous, than Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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