The Prisoner in the Castle
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Average rating3.3
A series of baffling murders among a group of imprisoned agents threatens the outcome of World War II in this chilling mystery from the New York Times bestselling author of Mr. Churchill’s Secretary. November, 1942. World War II is raging, and former spy Maggie Hope knows too much: what the British government is willing to do to keep its secrets, who is lying, who the double-crossers are. She knows exactly who is sending agents to their deaths. These are the reasons Maggie is isolated on a remote Scottish island, in a prison known as Killoch Castle. When one of her fellow inmates drops dead in the middle of his after-dinner drink—he’s only the first. As victims fall one by one, Maggie will have to call upon all her wits and skills to escape—not just certain death . . . but certain murder. For what’s the most important thing that Maggie Hope knows? She must survive. Praise for The Prisoner in the Castle “The colonel sums it up best on page ten: ‘If you take a pretty girl and teach her how to kill, it can cause problems.’ Not just problems—electrifying action and nonstop surprises. I loved this book!”—R. L. Stine, author of the Goosebumps and Fear Street series “Another literary tour de force . . . From the book’s perfectly calibrated plot to its incisively etched characters, everything is handled with perfect finesse by the author.”—Poisoned Pen Newsletter “One pleasure of a mystery series is connecting with a character that changes and grows with each novel. . . . Maggie’s intelligence and loyalty to the war effort continue to evolve in [Susan Elia] MacNeal’s series. . . . Solid twists keep the plot of The Prisoner in the Castle churning until the surprise finale.”—Associated Press “A mystery . . . tailor-made for readers in the post-election, #MeToo era. . . . If you love a tricky puzzle that requires you to keep track of multiple alibis over time, this is your summer read.”—The Washington Post “Evocative.”—Publishers Weekly “MacNeal uses [Agatha] Christie’s And Then There Were None as a framework for a character-driven mystery/thriller that successfully emulates the original.”—Kirkus Reviews
Series
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8 primary booksMaggie Hope
Maggie Hope is a 8-book series with 8 primary works first released in 2012 with contributions by Susan Elia MacNeal.
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Maggie is a brave, educated, strong young woman who I have come to love through the series. The ending of The Paris Spy was an unexpected cliffhanger and I was eagerly waiting for this installment, but unfortunately this was a disappointment.
Nothing really happens on the Island of Scarra where all these agents are isolated and imprisoned. They start getting killed off one by one but and I thought Maggie would get an opportunity to investigate and find the killer, but that's not what happened. Whatever she learned, she just stumbled upon by accident. I hoped atleast the story arc of the German Spy would be interesting, but it turned out to be quite anticlimactic. None of my favorite characters seemed to have much to do here.
I would still probably continue this series because Maggie is a wonderful character but this book was definitely forgettable.
Unlike a lot of other readers, I haven't read any previous Maggie Hope books and this is the eighth in the series, so I came with no knowledge of the character or the previous WWII adventures she'd had. That left me scrambling a bit as I tried to piece together Maggie's relationships with people back in London and how her backstory fit into this one. But that was a minor complaint and really, just left me hungry to read the previous novels.
I love locked-room mysteries (in this case a remote castle on the western slopes of Scotland) so that added to my enjoyment as I tried to figure out who among the eleven British SOE agents sequestered there (because of what they knew) was murdering the others one by one. (and yes, it's similar to Christie's And Then There Were None in that respect). I did find myself questioning early on the premise that the British government would actually imprison valuable agents in the middle of a crucial war, only to find in an author note at the end that yes, this type of facility actually did exist.
The plotting was spot-on, although in the early stages, I had a bit of trouble keeping all the various characters straight. And the settings—both the horrendous weather that keeps help from arriving and provides serious obstacles to Maggie communicating to her possible helpmates, as well as the creepy Scottish castle with its turrets, taxidermy heads, and hidden passages—lent an added layer to the mysterious goings-on. The most enjoyable part of the book was trying to figure out the “who” but the backstory of the previous residents of the castle lent an interesting air of foreboding to the remote setting.
I would definitely read earlier books in the series as Maggie Hope seems to be a resourceful, intelligent, and empathetic character, who reminded me of Maisie Dobbs, one of my favorite heroines. Plus I'm a sucker for WWII stories of female bravery and ingenuity.
