Princess Elizabeth's Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal

I read this on Saturday.  I enjoyed it very much.  I'm struggling to figure out which elements made me enjoy the experience.  I find myself wondering if I'm stuck in a Downton Abbey mindset:  when, for instance, Maggie Hope is roundly rebuked for not dressing for dinner, I think, "Hmm.. that's interesting .. dressing for dinner is still important in 1941."

I wonder if the quality that I enjoy is that it doesn't seem too real, and it doesn't seem too frightening. I know from reading the acknowledgments that MacNeal did some research, especially in reading the memoir of the real-life governess who cared for the royal princesses in Windsor Castle.  Maggie, despite her disappointment at spy school, is someone who is surprising lucky, competent and capable.  She always comes out on top!

I knew from reading reviews that at least one critic thought that the second book in the Maggie Hope series was not as strong as the first; I can't say that I perceived much difference.  In both books, the mystery is, who can be trusted?  And while I was much less surprised by the big reveal in the second novel, I did not predict all the twists and turns.  It may be that the guilty parties were too obviously signaled by the author -- I'm not sure.

As the novel opens, Maggie is excited -- but exhausted -- to be at spy school in Scotland.  Sadly, her physical strength is just not great enough, and she is in danger of failing to pass the physical strength and endurance tests.  At the same time, there's a murder at Claridge's Hotel that suggests not only that there may be a spy or spy network at Windsor Castle, but that there may be a connection to the spy at Bletchley Park that Edmund Hope, Maggie's father, has been working undercover to try to discover.

Frain, the head of MI-5, pulls Maggie out of spy school to pose as a math tutor to the teenage Princess Elizabeth, who is living, with her sister Margaret, at Windsor Castle.  The Luftwaffe bombings have made London unsafe for them.  Maggie's job is to discreetly keep her eyes and ears open while avoiding any suspicion.  This is the perfect job for Maggie, who is a talented mathematician who once aspired to attend MIT.

Of course, on her first night, Maggie is roundly criticized for not dressing for dinner.  She begins to meet the many folks working at Windsor Castle -- the librarian, the ladies-in-waiting, the governess, the cook, the falconer .. the list goes on and on.

I think I appreciated the details like knowing that the Royal Mews is located on top of the castle and that that is where the falcons are kept.

Maggie saves the day, as usual, but this time with a big assist from a stout-hearted and enterprising Princess Elizabeth.

In the next book,  His Majesty's Hope, Maggie is dropped into France, and the story begins in Germany.  Stay tuned! 

Golden Egg by Donna Leon

The Publishers Weekly review of this book concludes this way:  "Appreciative of feminine charms, the deeply uxorious Brunetti amply displays the keen intelligence and wry humor that has endeared this series to so many."

I always feel suspicious whenver I see the word uxorious: it reminds me of when Jonathan Franzen didn't want to be named an Oprah author because he believed men would not buy his book.

By the way, the Merriam-Webster.com definition of uxorious is:  having or showing an excessive or submissive fondness for one's wife.

Can't agree with Publishers Weekly's assessment:  I'd say Commissario Guido Brunetti is smart.

When his wife calls him at work to tell him some sad news, that the disabled man who worked at their neighborhood cleaners has died and that she feels bad because she doesn't know how to help or to honor this man's life, he clearly feels that she is being oversensitive.  But he is careful to hear her out, to sound saddened as well, and to call her a pet name as he ends the phone conversation.

It is his wife Paola's concern for the dead man, David Cavanella, that starts in motion Commisario Brunetti's investigation of what appears at first to be an accidental death.  The investigation is difficult:  the dead man's mother shuts her door in Brunetti's face.  He figures a roundabout direction is the best way to investigate further:  the neighbors aren't talking either, and he wonders if his colleague Vianello's wife would be the right kind of person winkle some truth out of the neighbors. But Vianello, somewhat to Brunetti's surprise, turns him down.  Eventually, he turns to his Neapolitan colleague, Griffoni, and also has seeks the help of another colleague, the redoubtable Elettra, his superior's well-informed secretary and a longtime ally.  And, he learns a lot about all of his colleagues, as they struggle over their abilities to manipulate suspects and the tug of loyalties to family and work that sometimes conflict.

The theme, to me, is surprising:  it's about bad, I mean really bad parenting.  Guido and Paola make a strong and convenient contrast.  It's also about the joys of language, perhaps not surprising for an author (and her audience). As wholesome and happy and Guido's family seems, the dark mystery he unravels is very dark indeed.

Tricky Twenty-Two by Janet Evanovich

What a great read!  It's easy, fast and engaging.

Stephanie Plum is a bounty hunter who works for her cousin Vinnie, a bond bailsman.  Bonds bailsmen finance the bonds that that people are who are charged with crimes have to pay in order to guarantee that they will return for their court date.  When those with bail bonds fail to show for their court date, it's Stephanie's job to pick them up and take them back to jail.

Stephanie has problems.  She's not really cut out to be a bounty hunter:  she owns a gun, but she doesn't have any bullets.

She has two men who are interested in her:  Ranger, the "super-hot" head of a local private security firm, and Joseph Morelli, a sweet, mild-mannered man whom she loves .. but who has just broken up with her.

She's charged with finding a college student whose nickname is "Gobbles."  He's charged with striking the dean of students at a local college.  Stephanie works hard on this case, but each time she visits campus the mystery of just what it is that Gobbles is mixed up in deepens and something bad happens.  On one visit, Gobbles' fraternity brothers do something very, very bad to her car.  On another occasion, there is a big explosion and fire.

Stephanie says of her trusty sidekick, Lula:

"Lula was originally a respectable 'ho.  A couple of years ago she'd decided to relinquish her corner to take a job as a file clerk for the bonds office.  Since almost all the files are digital these days, Lula mostly works as my wheelman.  She's four inches too short for her weight, her clothes are three sizes too small for her generously proportioned body, and her hair color changes weekly, her skin is a robust dark chocolate.

"I feel invisible when I stand next to Lula, because no one notices me.  I inherited a lot of unruly curly brown hair from the Italian side of my family, and I have a cute nose that my grandma says is a gift from God.  My blue eyes and pale skin are the results of my mother's Hungarian heritage.  Not sure where my 34B boobs come from, but I'm happy with them, and I think they look okay with the rest of me."

And Stephanie has family:

"My mother and Grandma Mazur were in the kitchen eating lunch when I walked in. Grandma Mazur came to live with my parents when Grandpa graduated from this life to the next.  My mother, being a good Catholic woman, accepted this living arrangement as her cross to bear and gets by with help from Jim Beam.  My father developed selective hearing and spends a lot of time at his lodge.  And now that we took his gun away we feel that it's safe to leave him alone with Grandma."

This is a great book for a trip (or as an audiobook for a car trip) or a doctor's appointment.