Review and Giveaway of Princess Elizabeth’s Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal

The winner of the Giveaway is JJ Murphy. Congratulations!
Leave a comment below by October 1 to enter the Giveaway to win my advanced reader’s copy (not the final edition–excuse a few errors) of Princess Elizabeth’s Spy. You’ll get two entries for each link to FB, Twitter or elsewhere. Include the link(s) in your comment.

With the recent celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s Jubilee, it’s especially engaging to read a novel about her as a young Princess—set in some of England’s darkest days during the brutal bombing attacks by Germany during WWII. While the adventures of Maggie Hope, spy and mathematician, with the fourteen-year-old Princess are fictional, MacNeal’s portrayal of Elizabeth rings delightfully true. Here’s the very young woman who already holds a powerful sense of duty to her people and carries her responsibilities with great love and care, even while she’s still a mischievous child as well—and those black-and-sable corgis! No matter that Elizabeth’s favorite dog has the habit of biting, the Princess is still devoted to him, and riding is her favorite activity. The “inside view” from Windsor is warmly entertaining from beginning to end. Maggie’s rooms at the top of Victoria Tower come complete with a loo on the roof. Creative plumbing added in later, apparently. Keep checking the closets because the scoundrels have slipped into the castle and it will take all of Maggie’s intelligence and gumption to keep the Princess safe.

As with her first Maggie Hope book, Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, MacNeal excels both at creating a sense of place in history and at developing characters that draw us in and hold us there. She’s particularly good at giving us a cast of characters with multiple people we feel compelled to suspect. She’s great at planting clues, along with a fair share of misleading but true clues, so that you keep turning the page in anticipation of figuring out what’s up, but you’re unlikely to catch the Nazis before all is revealed. MacNeal’s plot is pleasantly twisted.

The idea of betrayal and what drives people to it arises in a number of ways in this book. Sometimes blind chauvinism, too arrogant to see the value of a woman’s mind, causes inadvertent, stupid betrayal. Sometimes war, both on the home front and on the battlefield, wounds so deeply and destroys men so thoroughly that they thrash about trying to save themselves from emotional drowning and in doing so betray those around them. Sometimes the heart has to have certainty to hold onto love, and a kind of betrayal can hide in the shadows among even the most loyal. Sometimes people must choose who to betray and who to protect when they are forced by evil circumstances.

The variations on this theme underlie many of the intertwined plotlines of the mystery, but despite this seemingly heavy idea, the novel is primarily a fun read with a sense of humor and a playfulness that will entertain you. Take for example—at one point Princess Elizabeth takes a cue for defensive action from her Corgi and bites a villain in the ankle. If you’re not laughing, you’re made of stone (and biting your own nails—it’s a scary moment, clever of MacNeal to combine with humor).

I definitely recommend curling up with Princess Elizabeth’s Spy.

On sale starting October 16. The publisher gave me an advanced copy for this review.