Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine Bantam
The longevity of this series is a testament to a compelling plot, an engaging heroine, and a tightly cohesive story of historical events. Book 5, Mrs. Roosevelt's Confidante, extends and enlarges on the original -- much to the delight of Maggie Hope's readers.
What's different about this book
The story arc of the series follows Maggie Hope as she first appears: a young and naive American caught in London at the start of World War II. Maggie's character development of is well done. Author MacNeal realistically and engagingly develops Maggie into an experienced and competent spy, still with her faults but with a much wiser understanding of the world around her. I was sometimes impatient with her younger, ingenuous character, but Maggie is coming into her own with this fifth title. A particular treasure of this book and the series itself is the exceptional look at a complex and compelling time in history and its remarkable heroes (and villains). Ms. MacNeal is careful to characterize her books as fiction, but there is a wonderful interweaving of historicity with that fiction.
What I'll do now that I've read it
Being a compulsive series reader, I couldn't begin book 5 until I had read through the preceding four titles. And I was pleasantly entertained, not by any single book but by the collective story. However this fifth title is perhaps the strongest of the series. As I have been reading, I have mentally enumerated the historical fiction readers who will want to read these -- along with those who want to see the growth of a feminist perspective grounded in a historical setting. This series will fill a great niche for our library patrons.
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