Review: Mr. Churchill's Secretary

Title: Mr. Churchill's Secretary

Author:  Susan Elia MacNeal

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group

Publication date: 4/3/2012

Bought by the Reviewer (aka moi)

Pages: 384

Synopsis:  London, 1940. Winston Churchill has just been sworn in, war rages across the Channel, and the threat of a Blitz looms larger by the day. But none of this deters Maggie Hope. She graduated at the top of her college class and possesses all the skills of the finest minds in British intelligence, but her gender qualifies her only to be the newest typist at No. 10 Downing Street. Her indefatigable spirit and remarkable gifts for codebreaking, though, rival those of even the highest men in government, and Maggie finds that working for the prime minister affords her a level of clearance she could never have imagined—and opportunities she will not let pass. In troubled, deadly times, with air-raid sirens sending multitudes underground, access to the War Rooms also exposes Maggie to the machinations of a menacing faction determined to do whatever it takes to change the course of history.  Ensnared in a web of spies, murder, and intrigue, Maggie must work quickly to balance her duty to King and Country with her chances for survival. And when she unravels a mystery that points toward her own family’s hidden secrets, she’ll discover that her quick wits are all that stand between an assassin’s murderous plan and Churchill himself.

My thoughts:  I picked up this book yesterday at Barnes and Noble and finished it, oh about a half-hour ago.  I hadn't planned on buying a book at B&N unless it was a research book since I'm a little poor right now and books are a luxury compared to say food and electricity, but I just couldn't help myself, it called out to me. You know how that is, before I knew it, I was at the cash register handing over my membership card.  I didn't even NOOK it but bought the actual physical book.

Thank god I did because this is an awesome book. I'm a sucker for books set during WWII probably because my dad fought in the war.  Unlike Susan Elia MacNeal who came up with the idea for Mr. Churchill's Secretary by visiting the Cabinet War Rooms, I wept through them. This book is chock-full of details about the period, and a fascinating cast of supporting characters. I now have a girl crush on Maggie Hope. British born but raised in America (a Wellesley graduate to boot, like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton),  Maggie is brave, bold, brilliant and brash.  She's not afraid to speak her mind, but she's also not without her flaws, she's prickly and stubborn, a little too certain that she's right at times.  Probably because she grew up always being the smartest girl in a room.  She has a passion for mathematics, and just wants to be able to use her skills for the war effort, not be stuck as a typist, even if she's typing for Winston Churchill.

Some of the best scenes in the book were Maggie's one-on-one scenes with the PM, with just a few deft strokes, MacNeal manages to convey the boundless and unrelenting energy of Winston Churchill. The book is both a fast-paced thriller with just enough surprises to keep the reader gasping, as well as an intimate portrait of Britain at war, scene through the eyes of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances. The book is incredibly well-written, immensely lyrical. One of the best scenes in the book is the scene where the PM, Maggie and her friends are watching the Luftwaffe drop bombs on London from the roof of Number 10.  I couldn't put this book down and I will be counting the days until the next book in the series Princess Elizabeth's Spy comes out.

Of course, there are a few quibbles, I wouldn't be me if I didn't get a bit nic-picky.  The Duke of Windsor was Edward VIII not Edward VII who was his grandfather (MacNeal gets it right in the sequel), Odile is not the swan in the 2nd act of Swan Lake, it is Odette.  I don't want to spoil the plot but there were a few too many cooincidences that any soap viewer would pick up on.  Once would have been fine but it happens three times which is three times too much.

The back cover copy compares the book to Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series which I haven't read but to me it reminds me more of Kathryn Miller Haine's Rosie Winter series which is also set in WWII and features an American heroine.

Verdict:  If you like a little history with your mystery, this book is for you.

Book of the Month: Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel's Secret War

Title:  Sleeping with the Enemy - Coco Chanel's Secret War
Author: Hal Vaughn
Pub. Date: August 2011

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Format: Hardcover , 304pp



Overview:  “From this century, in France, three names will remain: de Gaulle, Picasso, and Chanel.” –André Malraux


Coco Chanel created the look of the modern woman and was the high priestess of couture.

She believed in simplicity, and elegance, and freed women from the tyranny of fashion. She inspired women to take off their bone corsets and cut their hair. She used ordinary jersey as couture fabric, elevated the waistline, and created bell-bottom trousers, trench coats, and turtleneck sweaters.

In the 1920s, when Chanel employed more than two thousand people in her workrooms, she had amassed a personal fortune of $15 million and went on to create an empire.

Jean Cocteau once said of Chanel that she had the head of “a little black swan.” And, added Colette, “the heart of a little black bull.”

At the start of World War II, Chanel closed down her couture house and went across the street to live at the Hôtel Ritz. Picasso, her friend, called her “one of the most sensible women in Europe.” She remained at the Ritz for the duration of the war, and after, went on to Switzerland.

For more than half a century, Chanel’s life from 1941 to 1954 has been shrouded in vagueness and rumor, mystery and myth. Neither Chanel nor her many biographers have ever told the full story of these years. Now Hal Vaughan, in this explosive narrative—part suspense thriller, part wartime portrait—fully pieces together the hidden years of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s life, from the Nazi occupation of Paris to the aftermath of World War II.

Vaughan reveals the truth of Chanel’s long-whispered collaboration with Hitler’s high-ranking officials in occupied Paris from 1940 to 1944. He writes in detail of her decades-long affair with Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage, “Spatz” (“sparrow” in English), described in most Chanel biographies as being an innocuous, English-speaking tennis player, playboy, and harmless dupe—a loyal German soldier and diplomat serving his mother country and not a member of the Nazi party.

In Vaughan’s absorbing, meticulously researched book, Dincklage is revealed to have been a Nazi master spy and German military intelligence agent who ran a spy ring in the Mediterranean and in Paris and reported directly to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, right hand to Hitler.

The book pieces together how Coco Chanel became a German intelligence operative; how and why she was enlisted in a number of spy missions; how she escaped arrest in France after the war, despite her activities being known to the Gaullist intelligence network; how she fled to Switzerland for a nine-year exile with her lover Dincklage. And how, despite the French court’s opening a case concerning Chanel’s espionage activities during the war, she was able to return to Paris at age seventy and triumphantly resurrect and reinvent herself—and rebuild what has become the iconic House of Chanel.