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. 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. 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. They’re to interview German POWs for possible recruitment as double agents, with Merle, a third-generation German-American, as interpreter. 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. She’s now part of Morale Operations, which creates and disseminates black propaganda-disinformation intended to hasten the fall of the Third Reich.
Louise Pearlie is hopeful that her new assignment within the OSS will be more exciting than her previous post as a glorified file clerk. (Jan.An intelligence agent gets more than she bargained for when she’s promoted during the final days of World War II.
Agent: Vicky Bijur, Vicky Bijur Literary Agency. 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. 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. 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. On arrival, Louise meets fast-talking Alice Osborne, her new supervisor, and Merle Ellison, a German-speaking Texan and government forger.
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.
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