April 16, 2012
In Shaber’s winning second WWII-era novel of suspense (after 2011’s Louise’s War), 30-year-old widow Louise Pearlie, who clerks for the OSS in Washington, D.C., befriends Alessa di Luca, “a penniless female refugee” she meets at her knitting circle. When Alessa gives Louise a written message to take to her superiors, it turns out that her new friend is really Countess Alessa Oneto, and her message involves critical intelligence concerning mob protection of New York City and other nearby ports from which supplies ship to the North African front. Plucky Louise soon finds herself enmeshed in intrigue involving Sicilian royalty, a Russian-born OSS colonel, and a cutthroat Italian Communist who would rather see postwar Sicily in the hands of his comrades than the Mafia. Shaber brews a delightful mix of feminine wiles (long before women’s liberation) and real-life history that will keep readers turning the pages. Agent: Vicky Bijur, Vicky Bijur Literary Agency.
June 1, 2012
The indignities of being a woman during World War II in Washington, D.C. Youngish widow Louise Pearlie, earning the grand sum of $1,600 a year as the Chief File Clerk of the Europe/Africa Section of the Research and Analysis Branch of the Office of Strategic Services, is good at organizing index cards but woefully inept at knitting socks for the boys over there. Still, she joins a Friday evening knitting circle, where she's befriended by Alessa, who takes her aside and asks her to deliver a message of great importance to her superiors. And just like that, Louise (Louise's War, 2011, etc.) becomes a secret agent, passing information from Alessa to the higher-ups at OSS that will ensure the safety of convoys sailing from the New York docks to Casablanca with Allied supplies and troops. Given a crash course at The Farm, Louise learns defensive maneuvers, is given a Schrade pocketknife and a cover story, and is giddy with the thrill of it all until Alessa commits suicide before she can deliver the name of the spy who's been working the waterfront and giving the Nazis vital shipping information. Shocked, Louise, who insists that the suicide was staged, finds herself sidelined when Operation Underworld is shut down. Undeterred, she carries on alone, befriending both a low-level Mafioso working at the Mayflower Hotel and members of Alessa's entourage living in its penthouse suite. Snooping in Alessa's boudoir will demand skills learned at The Farm and reveal the shattering fact that she has been set up from the beginning. An alarming reminder of how sexist life was back in the '40s and how the Mafia took root in Sicily.
COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
May 1, 2012
The second Louise Pearlie mystery (after Louise's War, 2011)is also set in 1942 in Washington, D.C., where the young widower works for the OSS's European desk. Louise enjoys her independence and life as a career girl but is a little bored with her filing work. So when a woman in her knitting circle approaches her with a letter for her superiors at OSS, Louise leaps headfirst into spying. When it turns out that her contact is an Italian countess who may be able to provide information about Axis infiltrators on the New York docks intent on sabotaging the critical supply convoy being sent to the North African front, Louise risks her life and career for her country. The murder-mystery element doesn't start up in earnest until the second half of the book, but that doesn't detract from the engaging historical aspects of the story. Suggest this to fans of Maisie Dobbs and even readers who wonder what Julia Child really got up to in her OSS days during WWII.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)