Susan Elia MacNeal

This is Book 7 of the Maggie Hope series. The time is 1942, and the setting is Paris, France, which was under Nazi occupation. Maggie works for the British SOE, but her trip to Pars is actually for her own mission. After the great job did in the previous book, she asked Winston Churchill himself to let her go to look for her half-sister who has gone missing in occupied France. Sporting an haute couture wardrobe and the name of of an Irish debutante, she sets out to find Elise. This series is not a series that can really satisfactorily be started in the middle of the series. There is always so much that happens in these books, that in order to understand the gist, you should start with Book 1-Mr. Churchill's Secretary. Yes, from these humble beginnings, smart as a whip Maggie Hope has worked her way up to be an agent in the Secret Service. Once she is in Paris, she becomes embroiled in an ongoing SOE operation that has already claimed the lives of a few agents. Maggie in her "legend"or persona as Paige Kelly, puts herself in grave danger trying to help her fellow agents, whilst still trying to locate her sister. As always Maggie is resourceful and using her wits, she manages to thwart a Nazi terrorism attack even while she is being held prisoner at SS Headquarters. The book does leave things very unsettled at the end, so now I will have to read Book 8, but I just whizzed through this one, and it held my interest throughout. I highly recommend this series to those who enjoy WWII thrillers and strong and forceful female characters. The book is peopled with both real and imagined characters, and just oozes authenticity about spy craft and deep, deep secrets of wartime England and France.… (mere)

I have heard great things about the Maggie Hope mastery series and I finally had a chance to read the latest installment. World War II is at its peak in Great Britain. Emotions are on high alert and no one can be trusted. Maggie Hope has been sent to Forbidden Island for a special training, or so she is told. Forbidden Island is really the Isle of Scarra, a three square mile island off the coast of Scotland with rugged terrain and horrible storms. Maggie is also not in a special training camp but is actually a prisoner in the ugly, formidable Kiloch Castle along with other individuals of the SOE, or Special Operations Executives. No one knows why anyone else is there which shrouds each prisoner in secrecy and, just like outside the walls of the castle, no one can be trusted.

After a newcomer joins the captives at the castle people begin dying under incredibly mysterious circumstances. Maggie, being the levelheaded woman that she is, chalks them up to mere coincidences, until the deaths become so numerous that there is no way they can be just coincidences. Someone is killing the prisoners off one by one and Maggie quickly realizes that she must find out who the murderer is before she's the next victim.

I really enjoyed this novel and found it an engaging read. The reader finds themselves instantly intrigued and constantly trying to guess the murderer. The writing is so well done that you can see the grotesque castle as well as the beautiful Isle of Scarra, which is actually a fictitious island, but there were some historical gems that were true that really added to the realism of the story as a whole.

The Prisoner in the Castle absolutely made me fall in love with Maggie Hope and I will definitely be reading more novels in the series. If you're in a mood for a good mystery then this is the book for you! I promise you won't regret it!… (mere)