Louise's Chance

November 16, 2015
Set in late 1943, Shaber’s suspenseful fifth WWII mystery (after 2014’s Louise’s Blunder) takes Louise Pearlie, who’s been working as a clerk for the OSS in Washington, D.C., to Fort Meade in Maryland, where she gets a more exciting job with Psychological Warfare Operations—helping recruit German POWs for an American black-propaganda campaign behind enemy lines. On arrival, Louise meets fast-talking Alice Osborne, her new supervisor, and Merle Ellison, a German-speaking Texan and government forger. The three learn that Rolf Muntz and Hurst Aach, two detainees from the same address in the Sudetenland, went overboard in transit across the Atlantic. The men apparently committed suicide, but, as the POW interviews get underway, Louise and company suspect what happened to Muntz and Aach is not so clear-cut. As usual, Shaber provides interesting period details, such as the enmity the Italian prisoners bear for the German prisoners in the aftermath of the German occupation of Italy. Agent: Vicky Bijur, Vicky Bijur Literary Agency.

November 1, 2015
An intelligence agent gets more than she bargained for when she's promoted during the final days of World War II. Louise Pearlie is hopeful that her new assignment within the OSS will be more exciting than her previous post as a glorified file clerk. She's now part of Morale Operations, which creates and disseminates black propaganda--disinformation intended to hasten the fall of the Third Reich. She's hardly settled into her new office when she's bundled onto a plane, along with her no-nonsense boss, Alice Osborne, and her Texan colleague Merle Ellison, and flown to nearby Fort Meade, site of a newly opened POW camp. They're to interview German POWs for possible recruitment as double agents, with Merle, a third-generation German-American, as interpreter. Although they find three likely candidates, none of whom shows any love for the Wehrmacht, one of them has a dismaying tendency to escape the camp, if only to enjoy a few hours of pleasure outside the compound. The second one, it seems, could be easily bribed with a pair of cowboy boots like Merle's, and the third, a seminary student, was conscripted against his religion and his will. But warning signs that frighten the prisoners and the death of one of the possible recruits put the black-ops plan in jeopardy, especially since there may be a connection with two prisoners who disappeared on the voyage to the States. And after Louise asks her secret lover, a Czech nationalist involved in a covert rescue operation, to help investigate the backgrounds of the missing men, both drafted from the same house in the Sudetenland, she and her colleagues realize they're up against a powerful opponent. Louise's fifth outing (Louise's Dilemma, 2013, etc.) once again takes the smart and independent heroine into one of the lesser-known arenas of the war. Solid characterizations and a faithful re-creation of wartime life more than make up for the leisurely pace.

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January 1, 2016

In the wake of Louise's Blunder, our heroine has a new job in the fledgling Office of Strategic Services. A murder is committed while she and her boss are questioning German POWs at Fort Meade, MD. An outstanding historical series with well-drawn details about the U.S. home front during World War II.

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