December 30, 2016

Finest Hour 174, Autumn 2016

Page 49

Susan Elia MacNeal, The Prime Minister’s Secret Agent, Bantam, 2014, 306 pages, $16. ISBN 978–0345536747

Review by Michael McMenamin

Portrayal of Churchill **1/2 Worth Reading ***


Susan Elia MacNeal, The Prime Minister’s Secret AgentThe Prime Minister’s Secret Agent is the fourth book in the Maggie Hope series to be reviewed in Finest Hour. The first three are Mr. Churchill’s Secretary (FH 156), Princess Elizabeth’s Spy (FH 158), and His Majesty’s Hope (FH 160).

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In The Prime Minister’s Secret Agent, Maggie is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) due to her last mission to Berlin. Unfortunately, Ms. MacNeal succumbs to the same temptation as other novelists who employ Churchill as a literary character and has Maggie describe her very real PTSD as something akin to Churchill’s “Black Dog” because “She’d once heard Winston Churchill describe his own melancholy as his ‘Black Dog.’” Maggie does have very real psychiatric problems, including insomnia and nightmares over her ordeal in Berlin, where she had killed a man and helplessly watched a little Jewish girl shoved into a cattle car. The reference to Churchill’s “Black Dog,” however, is gratuitous, entirely unnecessary, and wrong. As I noted in “Churchill as a Literary Character” in FH 173, “Churchill never suffered from clinical depression at any point in his life. Ever. Full stop. See “The Myth of the Black Dog” (FH 155). Hence, much as I really enjoy the Maggie Hope novels, I have docked her half a star for her portrayal of Churchill, which is otherwise very good and worth three stars.

The various plot lines about Maggie include her service as a hard-nosed SOE training instructor in the Scottish Highlands while she recovers from her PTSD, her discovery of Britain’s anthrax development program, her solving a mystery involving the deaths of several women by accidental anthrax poisoning, as well as dealing with a love life complicated by the return of her RAF lover whom she thought had died and who is unhappy she found a new beau in his absence.

There is also a major non-Maggie story line involving the months leading up to Pearl Harbor, told from the viewpoints of the actual Japanese, American, and British historical characters involved, including Ian Fleming and the British double agent Dusan Popov, who was sent by the Abwehr to map out Pearl Harbor. The Pearl Harbor story is, for the most part, well and accurately told except for when Ms. MacNeal posits that Churchill and British intelligence knew of the pending Japanese attack and chose not to warn America. This is plausible—barely—but it is well done. After all, her Churchill muses, if he tips the Americans, they will denounce the Japanese; Pearl Harbor will be on alert; the Japanese will call off the attack and turn their attention to British territories in Asia.

So verisimilitude is maintained at this point, and the historical errors that occur later are minor, e.g., Admiral Kimmel would never call a US Navy sailor “private”; the Repulse and Prince of Wales were not sunk the day before Pearl Harbor; and FDR did not invite Churchill to visit America immediately. Churchill certainly asked, but FDR put him off, saying he could not possibly see him for at least a month. That did not change until after Hitler declared war on the US, and FDR decided he could meet Churchill after all.

There are two more Maggie Hope novels already available that will be reviewed in future issues of FH: Mrs Roosevelt’s Confidante, which takes place during Churchill’s 1941 Christmas visit to the White House and The Queen’s Accomplice set in 1942 London, where a Jack the Ripper copycat is killing female SOE agents.


Novels are rated one to three stars on two questions: Is the portrayal of Churchill accurate, and is the book worth reading?

Michael McMenamin writes the “Action This Day” column. He and his son Patrick are co-authors of the award-winning Winston Churchill Thrillers series The DeValera Deception, The Parsifal Pursuit, The Gemini Agenda, and The Berghof Betrayal set during Churchill’s Wilderness Years, 1929–1939.

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