Set in 1941, MacNeal's fine fourth Maggie Hope mystery finds Maggie teaching at a training camp for spies in Scotland. Traumatized by her experiences in Berlin in 2013's His Majesty's Hope, she pushes the recruits hard, desperate for some peace of her own. Getting a close friend off a murder charge and helping to investigate the death of two ballet dancers bring her some respite. She also learns more about the war effort-and the difficulty of fighting a "clean" war-than she ever wanted to know. MacNeal focuses on the moral price of war, whose costs affect everyone from Maggie to Winston Churchill. She seamlessly mixes fact and fiction in the buildup to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The book's weakest link is Maggie's mother, the imprisoned German spy Clara Hess, who's scheduled for execution. With the emergence of multiple personalities, Clara comes across as a plot device, not a character. Agent: Victoria Skurnick, Levine Greenberg Literary. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Back from a deadly undercover mission in Berlin in 1941 (His Majesty's Hope, 2013), agent Maggie Hope feels dead inside. Working as an instructor at the Scottish black-ops base where she herself was trained, Maggie is plagued with what Churchill calls the black dog of depression. But when she takes time off to see a friend's ballet performance in Edinburgh and becomes involved in a murder investigation, her senses are reawakened. At the same time, the U.S. and Japan are involved in a futile diplomatic dance, with Churchill desperately wanting further American participation in the war effort and December 7 fast approaching. Even with the outcome known, MacNeal builds up pre-Pearl Harbor suspense, as coded messages fly back and forth, sometimes being delayed or dismissed because of their messengers. In her fourth solidly researched Maggie Hope mystery, MacNeal details small slips that lead to great tragedies as she lays the groundwork for a post-Pearl mission for Maggie. A treat for WWII buffs and mystery lovers alike.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2010 Booklist

A spy must cast off the black dog of depression in order to return to active duty.A Brit by birth, Maggie Hope was raised in the U.S. by her aunt; when she returned to Britain, she learned that the parents she thought were killed in a car accident are alive; her father's a codebreaker for Great Britain, her mother's a Nazi spy. This information changes her life and commits her to the war effort. A perilous trip to Berlin to deliver a set of radio crystals has left her physically wounded and mentally exhausted. Her mother is in the Tower of London waiting to be shot, and both Maggie and her father refuse to visit her. Two wartime romances have gone sour, so now Maggie is training recruits for MI5 at a remote Scottish house, too depressed to do anything else, when another instructor convinces her to go to Edinburgh to see her old friend Sarah dance in a ballet. The ballet ends in disaster when the leading lady collapses and dies. Sarah and another cast member are detained by the police until both become dangerously ill with the same symptoms as the dead ballerina. Maggie, who has seen similar symptoms in a sheep, is released from her depression by her quest to save her friend. While she's sleuthing in Scotland, the U.S. intelligence services, who have cracked the Japanese code, are blithely ignoring the danger signals of an imminent attack, and Churchill, certain that the U.S. will respond to any attack with a declaration of war, is pondering the moral implications of ignoring the coming crisis.Although this current installment is not up to the level of His Majesty's Hope (2013), it generates excitement as it explores the moral issues involved in winning the just war. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.