Maggie Hope, former secretary to Winston Churchill and secret agent for the British Special Operations Executive, knows too much. Or so her superiors in SOE have decided, so they send Maggie to the Isle of Scarra, off the coast of Scotland. There, failed agents wait out the duration of the war, living in a grotesquely elaborate castle filled with the taxidermized victims of the late Sir Marcus Killoch's hunting addiction.
Maggie and her fellow "guests" at the castle are unhappy; they while away their days with sniping, arguing and drinking too much before dinner. But after five months on Scarra, things suddenly get interesting--and alarming. First, one member of their odd assembly dies of a heart attack, which doesn't raise too many suspicions. But then another drowns. And two more are found dead, apparently the victims of strychnine poisoning. Suddenly Maggie and her fellow prisoners realize that not only animals are being hunted on this island.
In clear homage to Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, Susan Elia MacNeal (The Queen's Accomplice) has created a wonderfully believable scenario in which a dozen highly trained agents must pit their wits against each other and try to survive. Meanwhile, beyond the island, there are dangerous games afoot as Britain and Germany enter the desperate final days of the war. Readers of Jacqueline Winspear or Rhys Bowen are sure to love Susan Elia MacNeal both for her engaging characters and her historical accuracy. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans, Tucson, Ariz.