THE HOLLYWOOD SPY (Maggie Hope #10) by Susan Elia MacNeal will be published on July 6th 2021 by Bantam.
It is Summer 1943, and Maggie Hope has slipped away from war torn Europe to travel to Los Angeles as a favor for her ex-boyfriend, John Sterling. John has been living in LA while training fighter pilots and working on war propaganda with Walt Disney. When his fiancé dies under mysterious circumstances and the police show little interest in investigating, he asks Maggie to come to LA to determine what really happened. After determining that Gloria Hutton was murdered, Maggie digs deeper and finds other mysterious deaths that have recently taken place—including one that she witnesses. The link between the victims is that they all testified in sedition trials against German-Americans who were working to further the Nazi party's ideals in America. Maggie's investigation causes her to cross paths with crooked cops and a group of Klansmen bent on destruction.
I am a huge fan of the Maggie Hope series, and I was excited to receive an advanced copy of THE HOLLYWOOD SPY. It's good to see John Sterling return as a main character, and that the spark between him and Maggie is still alive. I did miss seeing what the rest of the main cast was up to—especially Mr. K.—but it was nice to see Maggie in a new location outside of Europe. But Los Angeles is not the paradise that it appears to be on the surface. Pollution from local factories is negatively affecting the air quality, and racism is running rampant and the Klan is working hand-in-hand with the local police. It was disturbing to read about such a dark side of American history and see that, in some ways, little has changed in the past 80 years.
As for Maggie, she seems to retreat into herself a bit in THE HOLLYWOOD SPY. There is a spring in her step that seems to be missing. Maybe it's further fallout from her experiences in previous books. Or maybe it's a combination of being back on her home turf and in John's presence again. But the strong woman from previous novels seems to get lost at times. It was good to see her come back full bore in the end, and set the reader up for the next novel in the series. I look forward to seeing what adventure awaits Maggie next.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.