The Hollywood Spy: A Maggie Hope Mystery
This tenth novel featuring American-born British spy Maggie Hope takes her to Los Angeles in 1943. A beautiful young woman engaged to Maggie’s old flame, British aviator John Sterling, lies dead in a hotel swimming pool. The police chalk it up as a slip and fall after a raucous party. John, living in LA to help train American fliers, asks Maggie over from London to find the killer. Nazi and KKK troublemakers simmer below the city’s enthusiastic patriots, defense workers, and military passing through. Maggie soon connects the young woman’s death to the fascists. As bodies pile up, MacNeal takes readers inside clusters of Nazi-lovers, corrupt cops, and FBI agents. One of the intense subplots involves a KKK ringleader father who makes death-dealing demands of his well-meaning young son. Another subplot touches on riots between rednecks and Mexican gangs.
When not prowling for clues and the killer, Maggie and John circulate in Hollywood’s studios and music hot spots. Among other luminaries, Walt Disney, Lena Horne, George Balanchine, Hattie McDaniel, and even scientist Linus Pauling make cameo appearances. Here, too, racism and homophobia tarnish and stifle work relationships.
MacNeal’s portrayal of hot, smoggy, bustling Los Angeles in this war-time summer feels right. Her information about many of the neighborhoods, hotels, restaurants and night spots fits nicely. The revelations of pervasive racism, homophobia, and misogyny are chilling. The main plot of finding the killer takes unexpected turns. Even Maggie’s relationship with John and his real reasons for asking her to help are not as they seem. Though interesting and informative, the novel’s multiple plotlines, many characters, and exposure of social injustices leave the reader both overwhelmed and wanting to know more. Perhaps more will be developed in book eleven.
