The King’s Justice: A Maggie Hope Mystery
By: Susan Elia MacNeal
Rating: 5 of 5
This is the ninth book in the Maggie Hope mystery series. In this story, Maggie has turned her life upside down. Because of her spying efforts in the War, and because of her near miss at being one of a serial killers victims, she has turned to something other than fighting the war.
She is still doing her part by diffusing unexploded bombs that litter the landscape in London. It is a hard job and one that is generally filled by conscientious objectors. A number of these are the British citizens of Italian descent. Rather than fight their families in the war, they turn to other ways of helping.
At the same time, there are two crimes that occur that Maggie is asked to get involved in solving. One is the theft of a Stradivarius from a famous violinist. The other is the murders that start happening and which seem to target conscientious objectors.
Maggie is hesitant to get involved in either as she is still recovering from the shock of having almost been killed. Her attacker is coming up his sentence of hanging being carried out. He is using every method to try to stop his death including trying to get Maggie involved in stopping it.
The story was, as always, interesting and engrossing. There were parts of the resolution to the whodunnit that surprised me but were a great ending.
I’ve read all but one of the books in this series (how I missed it, I don’t know.) As this book is transitional, I suggest reading at least the prior two books before reading this one. It can be read stand-alone, but the stories explain how Maggie got to the point of where she is when this story begins.
I was provided a digital advance reader copy of this book by the publisher via Netgalley.