Death in Focus by Anne Perry

Death in Focus: An Elena Standish Novel by Anne Perry --- 305 pages.

The first book in a new series by best selling historical mystery author Anne Perry, set in Europe during the rise of Fascism and the prelude to the Second World War.

From Google Books:

It is 1933 and Europe is a place of increasing fear and violence. Young British photographer Elena Standish is on assignment in Amalfi when she meets Ian Newton, a charming Englishman with whom she falls in love. But what does she really know about him?

Accompanying Ian on a train from Italy to Paris, Elena finds him dying of multiple stab wounds. Ian reveals he is a member of Britain's MI6 (Military Intelligence), on his way to Berlin to try to prevent the assassination of one of Hitler's henchmen. Hitler will eliminate a rival and frame the British for the death, thus creating an excuse to go to war. Elena promises to deliver the message to the British Embassy in Berlin. But she is too late: the assassination succeeds; Elena is accused of the crime and finds herself fleeing for her life.

Meanwhile Lucas Standish, secret head of MI6 during the war, learns that his beloved granddaughter Elena is being hunted in Berlin for murder. With Elena on the run, and at least one traitor in the British Embassy, how can Elena know who to trust?

The book disappointed me. My biggest problem is that Elena, a 28-year-old woman who grew up during the difficult years of World War I and its aftermath, and has been through one intimate betrayal already from trusting too much, is unbelievably naive. My second problem with the book is that some complete stranger (always male) turns up at every crisis to save Elena as she wanders about Berlin trying to evade arrest. On the other hand Perry does capture the fear and despair of people who barely survived one war and are now dreading another.

Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to read the review from Criminal Element.com.

Click HERE to watch Anne Perry discussing her new Elena Standish series. 

Elegy for Eddie: A Maisie Dobbs Novel by Jacqueline Winspear

Elegy  for Eddie: A Maisie Dobbs Novel by Jacqueline Winspear --- 331 pages

In 1933 Great Britain is still gripped by the Depression and the lingering personal and social malaise of the Great War. An entire generation, continuing to pay the terrible toll exacted by that war, watches numbly as the tides of war rise to engulf them once again.

Maisie Dobbs tells herself she is happy. Her hard work is reaping its reward, and her private inquiry agency is established and successful. She has achieved not just financial security but real wealth, now that she has inherited the fortune of her late mentor, Maurice Blanche, and can continue and expand upon his good work among the poor and suffering. Her devoted lover, James Compton, is willing and able to transport her to a life of affluence and privilege; she has only to say the word, and they will be married. Maisie knows she should be happy --- and yet she is not. At odd moments she even feels a panicked sense of suffocation.

When old mates of her father Frankie, costermongers from Lambeth, the neighborhood where she lived as a child, ask Maisie to investigate the suspicious "accident" that killed Eddie Pettit, she is eager to help. Eddie, a guileless, gentle man with an amazing rapport for horses, and his mother Maudie, are treasured friends from Maisie's childhood. Honest, kindly and inoffensive people, without an enemy in the world, she would have said.

But when Maisie begins to look more closely into the circumstances surrounding Eddie's "accident," and his unusual behavior in the weeks just before his death, she begins to suspect that this simple man had been drawn, unwillingly, into a very high stakes game indeed, played by powerful and ruthless men who are convinced that the end they seek justifies any and all means. And, even more troubling, there are people whom Maisie respects and admires, who are willing participants in their conspiracy to sway public opinion.