Excerpt from The Hollywood Spy

Friday, July 9, 1943
West Hollywood, California

“I have a feeling,” Maggie Hope murmured, stepping into the golden light, “we ’re not in London anymore.”

Her hair glinted copper in the sun; she was already dressed for the day in a blue-flowered shirtdress and wedge-heeled espadrilles.

Maggie looked over the balcony rail, down to the street below. Most of the early morning mist had burned off by now and the air was pure and jasmine-scented, the sky above neon turquoise. A fuzzy bumblebee drifted over a stone planter, settling on a large red rose. Across the street loomed a billboard that read: “UNITED we are strong, UNITED we win” with all the flags of the Allied nations. Next to it stood a poster for the new Walt Disney film Victory Through Air Power. Two klieg lights converged to form the giant V in Victory, illuminating silhouettes of Allied planes with the slogan: There’s a thrill in the air.

She surveyed the surrounding neighborhood; she had arrived late the night before and hadn’t been able to get a good view. West Hollywood was a mishmash of architectural styles—a Moorish minaret sprouted from a Swiss chalet, while a Tudor mansion overlooked a row of Georgian-style shops. Next door was a Spanish Colonial liquor store, a bar built to look like a log cabin, and a coffee shop with a gigantic coffee cup attached to the roof.

Across Sunset Boulevard, a group of men in black masks caught her eye. They were chasing a blond woman in a white dress and heels down the sidewalk. One pulled out a gun and shot—the woman froze before crumpling to the pavement.

My God, Maggie thought, as blood began to blossom through the fabric.

While she stared in horror, a short man entered her field of vision, waving his arms and yelling, “Cut! Cut!” He was portly, with a handlebar mustache and a megaphone. As he walked to the woman, she sat up and grimaced, pushing hair out of her eyes. He extended a hand to help her up and she took it, now laughing. It’s just a movie shoot, Maggie realized. She let her hands unclench from the fists she had made.

Relieved, Maggie took in the vista of Los Angeles’s downtown in the distance. The wind stirred the glossy fronds of the palm and pepper trees, and a goldfinch sang from one of the branches. She looked up and squinted as she caught sight of a hawk circling above her, dark against the hot, bright sky.

Maggie raised her arms and stretched, taking in the sunshine. In Los Angeles, in the light and the heat, she felt reborn—like Doro- thy in a Technicolor Oz, literally worlds away from her life in gray, dreary war-torn London. Even her memories of England seemed filmed in black-and-white.

Except it is, she had to admit. Maggie hadn’t seen or spoken to John for over two years. They’d met when he’d been working as Winston Churchill’s private secretary, the most staid of an already traditionalist set of recent Oxbridge graduates. She ’d been a typist. They had, for a brief moment, been engaged. While they’d made up and exchanged letters—cheery, breezy missives, often with drawings and cartoons in the margins—there had been no real information or emotion exchanged between them since their parting in Washington, D.C., after the Churchill-Roosevelt conference in 1941, just after Pearl Harbor.

Their mutual friend David Greene had kept both of them connected and up-to-date on each other’s adventures—or at least what wasn’t covered by the Official Secrets Act. It was through David that Maggie had learned first of John’s engagement to Gloria Hutton—and then of Gloria’s sudden death, followed by John’s hope that she would come to investigate his fiancée ’s possible murder. A chill passed across her back despite the warmth of the sun.

“I still can’t get over the palm trees,” Maggie said. “I can hardly believe they’re real, let alone how they stand upright. It’s like they consider physics optional.”

“But you’re American! At least you were born and raised here.”

“In Boston. And let me assure you, there are no palm trees in Massachusetts.”

“Palm trees have no business being this tall,” Sarah muttered as she continued to pound her shoe. “It’s unseemly.”

“Agreed.”

“I’m so glad we can be here in Los Angeles together,” Sarah said. “Although I’m sorry for the grim circumstance.”

“Well, we can’t all be movie stars,” Maggie said lightly.

“Still, it must be such a comfort to John to have you here while he’s grieving Gloria. Do you really think she was murdered?”

“I don’t know,” Maggie admitted. “From what I’ve read, there seems to be no evidence of foul play. But I’ll do everything I can to find out what really happened.”

“I’m sure John appreciates your being here, regardless of what you learn.”

“One way or another,” Maggie said, “I’ll find the truth.”

The Hollywood Spy, A Maggie Hope Mystery #10
Genre: Historical
Release: July 2021
Purchase Link

Los Angeles, 1943. As the Allies beat back the Nazis in the Mediterranean and the United States military slowly closes in on Tokyo, Walt Disney cranks out wartime propaganda and the Cocoanut Grove is alive with jazz and swing every night. But behind this sunny façade lies a darker reality. Somewhere in the lush foothills of Hollywood, a woman floats lifeless in the pool of one of California’s trendiest hotels.

When American-born secret agent and British spy Maggie Hope learns that this woman was engaged to her former fiancée, John Sterling, and that he suspects her death was no accident, intuition tells her he’s right. Leaving London under siege is a lot to ask. But John was once the love of Maggie’s life . . . and she won’t say no.

Maggie struggles with seeing her lost love again, but what’s more shocking is that her own country is as divided and convulsed with hatred as Europe. The Zoot Suit Riots loom large in Los Angeles, and the Ku Klux Klan casts a long shadow everywhere. But there is little time to dwell on memories once she starts digging into the case. As she traces a web of deception from the infamous Garden of Allah to the iconic Carthay Circle Theater, she discovers things aren’t always the way things appear in the movies—and the political situation in America is more complicated, and dangerous, than the newsreels would have them all believe.

About the author
Susan Elia MacNeal is the New York Times bestselling author of the Maggie Hope mysteries. MacNeal won the Barry Award and has been nominated for the Edgar, Macavity, Agatha, Left Coast Crime, Dilys, and ITW Thriller awards. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and son.

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