The Maggie Hope mysteries combine a lot of things that I love. I am a cozy mystery fanatic. I love history and find WWII particularly intriguing. I also love British mysteries. So, Susan Macneal’s British Cozy series has been awesome. It hits all of the boxes and then some.
Maggie Hope is a British-born American, raised in the United States by her aunt after both parents are killed in a car accident. Maggie, now a graduate in mathematics, postpones graduate studies at MIT to sell the house she inherited from a grandmother she never knew. After a year in London, Maggie takes a job as a typist for Prime Minster, Winston Churchill. Maggie’s mathematics ability helps her decipher a hidden code that leads her to MI5 and later Special Operations Executive (SOE). Each book in the series also reveals a little bit more about Maggie’s life and that of her parents. The Prime Minister’s Secret Agent is the fourth book in the series. After a successful mission in Germany during book 3 is completed, an emotionally damaged Maggie is back at the SOE training school in Arisaig Scotland, but this time as an instructor rather than a student. When she receives tickets to see her friend Sara in the ballet, she accepts. When the lead ballerina is killed during the performance, and Sara, initially a suspect but later appears to be suffering the same symptoms that have now killed two others, Maggie teams up with MI5 to solve the murder and locate a cure that can save Sara’s life.
Susan Macneal does a very good job of providing strong female characters in this series. Maggie Hope is an intelligent woman who is courageous and brave. She and her friends are all highly intelligent and independent. The women in this series are not the damsels in need of saving, but are more likely to be the pistol packing heroes, parachuting in to save the day or the villains sent to spy or destroy.
Another thing that is noteworthy in this series is Macneal’s depiction of “The Other” in these books. Maggie and her friends are liberated women who seem to be aware of their sexuality and comfortable with themselves. Maggie Hope is raised by her Aunt Edith in America, a lesbian college professor. David, Maggie’s best friend is a gay Jew working for Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Cozy mysteries are not known for sex, let alone homosexual relationships. Including prominent characters in positions of authority set in a time when homosexuality was still against the law in Great Britain is definitely pushing the cozy mystery envelope. During WWII, British laws like The Labouchere Amendment could lead to a prison sentence with two-years of hard labor, like Oscar Wilde, or chemical castration the punishment selected by mathematician Alan Turing. Macneal incorporates these subjects without forgetting that ultimately she is writing a work of fiction rather than a non-fiction essay on sexuality.
The books are well researched and incorporate just enough of Great Britain in World War II without turning the books into a treatise on history or the war. I like history, but if I wanted to read a book on World War II, I wouldn’t pick up a cozy mystery to do it. I never felt that I was drowning in details. She gave me just enough to create the setting and the tone of the book, without overloading me. But that’s just me. In reading through the comments left by other readers on Amazon, I was amazed by some of the comments citing errors about the time period. One comment criticized Macneal for referring to the title of one of her books, Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, when it was not made clear that Maggie had not sat for the civil servants exam necessary to be considered a “secretary” rather than a “typist.” Really?
My biggest criticism for the Maggie Hope series is that the author doesn’t always play fair with the reader. Not all clues necessary to solve the crime are presented to the reader. During the first book, information is revealed at the end which the reader was not privy to earlier. In fact, there isn’t always a mystery to be solved. The third book in the series, His Majesty’s Hope, did not include a murder mystery to be solved. The Prime Minister’s Secret Agent included a murder, but the murder felt more like an afterthought than the main focus of the book. These issues would normally be deal breakers for me. However, one thing that Macneal does well is creating characters that the reader cares about. I want to know what happens to Maggie, her boyfriend John Sterling, her father, half-sister and a host of other characters (not so much her mother a Nazi named Clara Hess – her I want shot). If you’ve been reading carefully you will remember that I mentioned earlier that her parents were both killed in a car accident, this is not a mistake. Yep, it’s complicated.
These books have the same feel as the Bletchley Circle Mysteries on PBS. If you like historical mysteries with strong female characters, you’ll enjoy the Maggie Hope mysteries.