Locked in pursuit

The Electra McDonnell series, now in its fourth outing, presents a winning combination of spy story, romance, insider's knowledge, and frequent peril set against the backdrop of the London Blitz. Electra is a young woman skilled at safecracking and lockpicking who came by her skills honestly thanks to being raised by a family of fantastically adept burglars. British intelligence recruited Electra in August 1940 (in A Peculiar Combination, 2021) to unlock potential secrets left in safes by German spies and British double agents. Now it's January 1941, the Blitz continues, and Electra's contact, the rugged, handsome Major Ramsey, once again enlists her help. This time, an armed robbery occurs at a fancy London dinner party, one where all of the guests were on the same flight back from Lisbon, a spy center. Ramsey suspects that the Germans are desperate to find some secret that was on that flight. Murder follows, along with the escalating romantic tension between Electra and the Major, in a rousing plot filled with fascinating period details.

The animated fourth installment in Weaver's Electra "Ellie" McDonnell series (after Playing It Safe) opens in 1941 England during the blitz. When Ellie, a former thief now working for British military intelligence, reads a newspaper account of a robbery at a diplomat's dinner party, she suspects it may be connected to one of her previous missions. She brings her suspicions to her handler, Major Gabriel Ramsey--one of her two love interests--and together they discover that the Nazis are tearing through London and Portugal in search of a map that identifies the location of a tungsten mine they need to manufacture munitions. To foil the Germans' plans, Ellie joins forces with her second love interest, forger Felix Lacey. Meanwhile, in a subplot that carries over from previous series entries, Ellie works to prove that her late mother did not murder her father during WWI. Weaver's prose sometimes gets bogged down in verbosity ("I was caught in a sort of quagmire of indecision") and superfluous underlining ("We need to find out what they're looking for before someone else is killed"). Still, with many well-deployed historical mystery tropes on offer, including a juicy love triangle and a host of elegant gowns, it's an enjoyable, fast-paced lark. Fans of Susan Elia MacNeal and Rhys Bowen will have fun. (May)

As German bombs rain down on London in 1941, spies play dangerous games of cat and mouse. Electra McDonnell has had a lot on her mind since she was told that her father was a German spy in the last war. Her mother, convicted of murdering her father, was imprisoned and died of influenza after giving birth to her. Brought up by her Uncle Mick, a locksmith with a sideline in safecracking, Ellie was pressed into the King's service by Major Ramsey, a tough military intelligence officer with a particular need for her special skills. Her last mission with Ramsey left him severely wounded and both of them fighting a fierce attraction to each other. Now a story in the paper about a robbery causes her to seek out Ramsey, whom she thinks may need her help. When he offers nothing but tea with his twin sister, Electra returns to searching for the truth about her father. Finding a book on Greek mythology in a family trunk, she suspects that annotations in its margins may be a coded message, but she can't crack the code. Then Major Ramsey calls on her to help investigate three very odd robberies, all of them connected to an airline flight from Lisbon. Interviewing people on that flight, they find a woman brutally murdered, raising the stakes dramatically. As she searches for a map the Germans are willing to kill for, Electra takes on more risk than the major approves. Intriguing subplots enhance an exciting romantic mystery. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.