Louise's War

Sarah Shaber has chosen WW2 Washington DC as both the scene and character of her new novel, "Louise's War". It's a winning combination as the city - famously referred to by John Kennedy only 20 years later as a "city of northern charm and southern efficiency" - goes to war in Shaber's story.Washington DC is one of my favorite cities; I've visited it often as both my sons have lived and worked there over the last ten years. It's a beautiful city - though not particularly comfortable in the summer - and wandering the streets at leisure is a walk through American history. The WW2-era buildings are all over the place; one of my sons lived in an apartment building on Scott Circle built during the war to house white-collar workers, who descended on Washington with the desire to help the "war effort" and, in many cases, to leave small-town life for the big city. It is one of those workers - Louise Pearlie - who's the main "human" character in Shaber's mystery.Louise, in her late 20's and a widow, has moved to DC from Wilmington, NC. She's fairly sophisticated for a small-town gal, and equipped with a junior college education, gets a "file clerk" job with the newly-established OSS. She works in a non-descript building near the George Washington University campus, and lives in one of the many boarding houses which housed government workers. She has heard from an old friend - a French Jewish woman with two children she had attended college with - who needs help in getting out of Vichy France before the Germans move in. She tries to help Rachel and her children through the standard "back-door" measures common in the early 1940's. Louise's co-workers and fellow boarders provide interesting secondary characters, but the real star of this book is the city of Washington and how it came alive during the war.Shaber is a good, not great, writer when dealing with the plot, but she's excellent when she writes about the city-in-wartime. The book is worth reading for that alone. I think this book might be part of a series; she has another long-running series featuring "Simon Shaw". I'll look for her next mystery in this series.

We live forward, but understand life only backwards . . . and if there's spycraft involved, perhaps not even then.And that will keep you reading fast as you can to the last page of Sarah Shaber's LOUISE'S WAR.Sarah Shaber succeeds in capturing the claustrophobia and purposeful paranoia of Washington D.C. during the uncertain early days of WWII. With a few deft strokes she gives us a firm-footed foundation and a credible backstory for her hero, Louise Pearlie (comparisons with Peggy Carter will be inevitable). Shaber may have filched a bit of the too-tight-around-the-elbows boarding house of 'The Day The Earth Stood Still,' but she gentrified it just a bit - and, again, in credible ways. The characters and situations are three dimensional, no one a pure angel or demon . . . and those are the appearances Louise finds herself forced to unravel and reveal in this first of a very, very enjoyable series of novels.If you're a compulsive problem-solver, like me, LOUISE'S WAR will cost you some sleep - and you won't mind a bit.

This story by North Carolina mystery writer Sarah Shaber brings to life the nostalgic, bygone era of wartime Washington D. C. in the 1940s through the eyes of the protagonist Louise Pearlie, a young widow, who has left rural North Carolina for Washington to rebuild her life. Her new life as a file clerk for the legendary Office of Strategic Services--rife with intrigue--and her homey place of abode, a rooming house with an endearing cast of characters, sets the tone of authenticity for that time. The plot itself involves Louise trying to get an old friend, a young lady with her children trapped in Vichy France, back home, by using backdoor channels open to her in her job and her connections there. But the draw of this story is to be put so totally into the times, smelling the food, feeling the summer heat of the city, sensing the energy of the wartime people on a mission, learning the daily brick-a-bract of the town, and to be caught up in the hopes and fears of the leading characters. This is the first entry into an ever wonderful series of WWII adventures featuring the charming, demure Louise Pearlie, a gracious young lady, armed with tenaciousness and bravery when the occasion demands it. To read these books is to have the perfect retreat from today into yesterday, like sinking under the cool underwater on a hot summer day.

This story is set in Washington, DC, during World War II. The hero is a young widow who works as a file clerk in the OSS (Office of Strategic Service, which later became the CIA). The setting is particularly well done, from the heat of a DC summer to the houses taken over for government offices, to the millions and millions of file cards compiled by the OSS and military organizations. Louise is an intelligent, likable character who, in seeking to help her college roommate in France, where Jews are about to be sent to concentration camps, disobeys orders and searches for a missing file which, if given to the right person, stands a chance of helping her friend. The pacing is good and the other characters are realistically suspicious. The resolution is believable and satisfying.The device of helping a friend who is trapped in France doesn't really seem the compelling part of the story: it comes and goes and never feels quite real. The writing is a bit heavy on narrative, a bit short on dialogue, and sometimes pronoun reference isn't clear. Nevertheless, this is a fairly smooth and easy read, and a thoroughly enjoyable story.