Echoes of Infamy
In this third installment of the Bishop and Gallagher Mystery series, the postwar world looks very different for former OSS agents Evelyn Bishop and Nick Gallagher. The two have married, and Evelyn has replaced her disgraced father as the head of Bishop Aeronautics, while Nick works as a private investigator. After the groundbreaking ceremony to expand the factory, a Japanese American man named Billy Takemura confronts Evelyn and claims they’re building the factory on land stolen from his family during the war. Shocked, Evelyn and Nick decide to investigate his claim, and uncover a twisted web of secrets, betrayal, and greed. The war may be over, but Evelyn and Nick soon realize that old grievances and prejudices lie just beneath the surface.
With a keen eye for detail, Steinberg excels at placing the reader in postwar Los Angeles in all its gritty reality. Evelyn and Nick are dogged in their pursuit of the truth, even when it may come at personal cost. But this book shines in Steinberg’s skillful handling of the deeply traumatic experiences of the Japanese American community as they return to a far different world than the one they left after being interned. Though this is a mystery novel, it also forces us to confront the morality of choices made to a people during a time of war and how those decisions can have lifelong, devastating consequences.
