The Paris Spy
Ratings4
Average rating3.5
**"You'll be [Maggie Hope's] loyal subject, ready to follow her wherever she goes."
--*O: The Oprah Magazine***
**AMERICAN-BORN SPY AND CODE-BREAKER extraordinaire Maggie Hope secretly navigates Nazi-occupied France to find two brave women during the darkest days of World War II in the latest novel in this *New York Times* bestselling series--"a treat for WWII buffs and mystery lovers alike" (*Booklist*, on *The Prime Minister's Secret Agent*).**
Maggie Hope has come a long way since serving as a typist for Winston Churchill. Now she's working undercover for the Special Operations Executive in the elegant but eerily silent city of Paris, where SS officers prowl the streets in their Mercedes and the Ritz is draped with swastika banners. Walking among the enemy is tense and terrifying, and even though she's disguised in chic Chanel, Maggie can't help longing for home.
But her missions come first. Maggie's half sister, Elise, has disappeared after being saved from a concentration camp, and Maggie is desperate to find her--that is, if Elise even wants to be found. Equally urgent, Churchill is planning the Allied invasion of France, and SOE agent Erica Calvert has been captured, the whereabouts of her vital research regarding Normandy unknown. Maggie must risk her life to penetrate powerful circles and employ all her talents for deception and spycraft to root out a traitor, find her sister, and locate the reports crucial to planning D-Day in a deadly game of wits with the Nazi intelligence elite.
This description comes from the publisher. *The Paris Spy* is the seventh Maggie Hope Mystery, the first of which is *Mr. Churchill's Secretary*.
Series
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7 primary booksMaggie Hope
Maggie Hope is a 7-book series with 7 primary works first released in 2012 with contributions by Susan Elia MacNeal.
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“Without the freedom to criticize, there is no true praise.”
I did not know this was the seventh book in a series when I picked this up. Hence, any mentions of Maggie Hope's earlier exploits were unfamiliar to me but they were not very distracting from the story itself. But I should probably catch up on the other six soon so as not to miss out any of the adventures of Miss Hope.
Maggie, working as a spy for the Special Operations Executive or SOE calls in some favors to get airdropped to Paris on a mission to find a missing SOE agent. Hopefully, she also wants to find her half -sister who is not reachable. The remaining story follows Maggie through her journey in Paris, working with other spies, navigating the tricky milieu of occupied Paris, establishing a rapport with her sister, capture and ultimate escape from the Nazis.
Posing as a rich Irish bride in Paris shopping for her trousseau, her interactions with Coco Chanel and other prominent Parisians of the time show a very different side of the occupation. Life seems to go on normally for the rich, probably even better considering they are able to openly profess their anti-Semitism but there are also subtle forms of resistance from the ordinary people. The descriptions of the city, its life, fashions, the ballet etc are vivid and rich in detail and the book is very thrilling right until the end. It's the shocking and callous twist at the end that had me dazed and I still can't believe it happened. Hopefully, the next book comes out soon enough. But as brave, resourceful and brilliant as Maggie is, I am sure she will come out on the top.
“Our survival overrides any moral consideration. They are waging total war, and so we must have total commitment to winning. No country was ever saved by good men, because good men will not go to the length that may be necessary.”
