An Unquiet Peace (A Bishop & Gallagher Mystery)
This fast-paced, engrossing novel is set in Los Angeles and Berlin amidst the turmoil and expectancy of post-World War II. An Unquiet Peace is an ambitious book that blends historical, noir, and detective genres and invites readers to consider how individuals remain hopeful in the face of corruption, violence, and despair.
The two protagonists in this story, private investigator Nick Gallagher and socialite-turned-aeronautics president Evelyn Bishop, meet while working for the OSS and fighting with the French resistance. Their shared experiences and losses draw them together, something explored in Steinberg’s first book in this two-book series, Under the Paper Moon. An Unquiet Peace deftly picks up where this earlier book left off, forcing Nick and Evelyn to grapple with both the sudden appearance of the long-assumed-dead wife and daughter of a German scientist extricated from Nazi Germany during the war, and the kidnapping of a bartender from an LA gentleman’s club.
Steinberg is a masterful storyteller. In the first pages of this book, she sets many balls in motion, juggling several storylines and settings. Skipping from the frantic Berlin Airlift, to the heady first days of the Jet Propulsion Laboratories and the aeronautics industry, to the seedy LA underworld of police corruption and mafia influence, to the beginnings of McCarthyism in Hollywood, Steinberg offers us lots to think about. There is an element of noir fiction here as we are forced to see the darkness and corruption in this story. But the protagonists are so capable and so good that this story is more detective novel than noir, and offers readers a lightness and sense of hopefulness even during this most unquiet of times.
