Starred review from October 10, 2016
Shaber’s winning sixth WWII mystery (after 2015’s Louise’s Chance) is her best yet. One subfreezing December night in 1943, government employee Louise Pearlie and her friend Joe Prager, who doesn’t know she works for the OSS, decide to go for a drink after seeing a movie at a Washington, D.C., theater. They choose the Baron Steuben Inn, where a customer searching for whiskey discovers a dead man, soaked in blood, behind the bar. In the subsequent police investigation, which is led by an acquaintance of Louise, Det. Sgt. Harvey Royal, Louise must keep the nature of her work secret. Each of the suspects—limited to the patrons of the Steuben Inn that night—has a lot to hide. No one wants to admit to being even tangentially involved with the former German embassy, which is just around the corner from the inn. Shaber does a fine job portraying the plight of alien residents in wartime Washington, besides conveying the hectic atmosphere of a city whose resources are stretched to the limit by an influx of new workers. Agent: Vicky Bijur, Vicky Bijur Literary Agency.
October 7, 2013
Set in 1943, Shaber’s mild third novel of suspense (after 2012’s Louise’s Gamble) takes widow Louise Pearlie from her desk at the Research and Analysis Branch of the OSS in Washington, D.C., into the field. A censor has relayed to the OSS a postcard with a seemingly innocuous message. Written in English and mailed from occupied France via neutral Lisbon to a man in Maryland, it contains an American place name with a German spelling. Fearing it’s a coded communication, Louise’s bosses order her to take the obvious first step of interviewing the addressee, Leroy Martin, but her clueless and ham-fisted partner, Lt. Arthur Collins, makes her job harder. The inquiry later becomes a murder investigation. Louise is able to thwart a Nazi plot because the bad guy unwisely decides to spare her life. Series fans will appreciate the attention to period detail (e.g., the OSS’s filing system was devised by the Yale scholar who edited Horace Walpole’s letters). Agent: Vicky Bijur, Vicky Bijur Literary Agency.
November 1, 2016
It's 1943, and Louise Pearlie and friend Joe Prager are getting a drink when a corpse is discovered behind the bar. Turns out the dead man was a caretaker at the abandoned German embassy. And, more important, he was an inside man for the OSS, with possible ties to Louise's own secret work. The sixth series entry follows Louise's Chance.
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