Flirting with Danger: The Mysterious Life of Marguerite Harrison, Socialite Spy

Harrison is certainly a fascinating character, although the book is uneven. Wallach is right to focus on her spying and travels, but does leave gaps you could drive a truck through. For example, what happened to her father's fortune that she was so often short of the ready? There is also a lot of filler, as other GR readers have noted. Do we really care about the minutiae of her cosmetics and furnishings? (An exception being her time in the Lubyanka, when all the details are of interest). Forty pages of trivia could easily have been jettisoned.

It was interesting to learn about pre-WWII American espionage; most of what I knew about previously was Wild Bill Donovan and the OSS. Several of my old college profs were spies or codebreakers; show more see Allen's Classical Spies.

Overall, it is an adequately researched and mostly entertaining book. show less

espionage, double-agent, biography, historical-places-events, historical-research, historical-setting, history-and-culture, historical-figures, 20th-century, widow, wealthy, Europe, Mid-East, journalist, linguist, explorers, riveting, misogynistic-era, feminist*****

Born an American socialite, widowed at 37, became the first female foreign intelligence agent for the United States government in 1918. As a wealthy socialite/journalist/linguist fluent in several European languages she had access to many political arenas and became a spy and later a double agent. She even became a writer/director/producer of a silent film and wrote her autobiography. Fantastic recounting of an amazing woman who defied the norms of her time.
I requested and show more received an EARC from Doubleday Books via NetGalley. Thank you show less