Princess Elizabeth's Spy (2012)

3.5 stars, really.

I liked this book a lot as a snapshot of a moment in history. I liked it a little less as a mystery. I have not read Mr. Churchill's Secretary, but that was not problematic for the reading or enjoyment of this story.

We meet Maggie Hope as she is failing out of a British equivalent of basic training, and I immediately liked her for that. I liked her for being a fan of math and logic, while not being a strange anachronism who was magically perfect at everything. In fact, I found almost all of the characters in the story likable and well-drawn.

MacNeal's grasp of history felt good to me, though I am not an expert on her time period. Historical accuracy aside, I felt she did an excellent job creating the mood of 1940 London and Windsor, which is what I liked best about the novel. I saw one reviewer mention, regarding Mr. Churchill's Secretary, that he found the story dull, even though it was set in the middle of one of the most exciting conflicts in world history. I disagree. Hundreds or thousands of authors have told stories of World War 2 featuring battle scenes and heroic deeds and dog fights and U-boats and all the rest. What I've never seen before is a story that is about the war, but the war as seen from the home front - the every day concerns of the people who are not on the front lines, but doing everything they can to further the efforts of their country. I enjoyed seeing images of dealing with the small horrors of food and clothing rations, bombing raids as common as overcast skies, everyone knowing someone who has died, or someone who is missing, and how everyone keeps going despite it all.

The storytelling was generally good, though felt a little choppy in the center. I got a bit turned around on how fast time was passing a couple of times, but the writer's voice was very readable and I was always interested in what was going to happen next.

(Light spoilers in this paragraph.) The mystery itself presented several problems for me, however. All was fine until the final conflicts began. I liked the red herrings MacNeal left for us, and I liked the many possibilities she provided for the bad guy. Then the climax began. The king was shot and the princesses herded up to their tower for safekeeping, and Maggie began acting irrationally. If I was a higher-up reviewing the facts of this MI-5 case, I would conclude that the agents involved were all incompetent and should be put on desk duty for a good long while. The problem is, I don't think any of the agents - especially Maggie - were meant to be incompetent. I think they were forced into their foolish actions by the author in order to heighten the conflict. Maggie is too smart to focus on Louisa the way she did and disregard all her other hunches about "nice" people, but she did anyway. Why would they take the long route through the dungeons when they could cut the bad-guys off by just meeting them at the exit, which location she knew? Was knocking on the door where the well-armed bad guys were hiding the ONLY thing she could think of?

Alas.

I really liked the family reveal at the end of the story, which redeemed the novel's conclusion for me.

Overall, an easy and enjoyable read, excellent for those who enjoy atmospheric tales, a bit of history, and a bit of intrigue. ( )

Finally able to write a review!

Maggie Hope is assigned to be a tutor for the young princess and she quickly realizes that this is hardly a fluff assignment. More than an hour math tutoring session will be needed for this mission!
We read of smart women on both good and bad sides and we see that Princess Elizabeth is spunkier than we might have thought :-)
The rest of my review can be found here. ( )

Under cover as a math tutor, Maggie Hope travels to Windsor Castle to help keep watch over young Princess Elizabeth. A bit far-fetched, but then again, what mystery isn't? Even so, generally an entertaining read. ( )

Where I got the book: ARC won on the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program.

The plot: In WWII Britain, Maggie Hope is assigned to teach math to Princess Elizabeth as a cover for investigating a possible danger to the young princess, as it's known that the Germans would love to replace her father, George VI, with the abdicated King Edward VIII (widely rumored in real life to be a Nazi sympathizer).

Nice idea, on the surface, and I can see how American readers who love a bit of royal glamor would like this one. But to a Brit, even a long-expatriated one, this story just grated on me like nails on a chalkboard. As it was an ARC I can't get into the text, but bits of research kept popping up and interrupting the action and the Princesses seemed far more like American schoolgirls than members of a family who were notorious for bowing and curtseying to each other even when only the servants were looking. There were some terms used that I KNOW (and I checked) were not in use in the 1940s, and the stoplight accident in 1917 could only have happened if Doctor Who had stopped by and brought a stoplight from the 1930s, when they came into use in Britain (other than the one that exploded in the late 1800s).

In a word, it was farfetched. Too much so for me. But, YMMV. ( )

It was okay, but could have used a bit of editing...a common complaint these days, it seems. The first was better: I hope this is not the beginning of a downward trend. ( )