Elise is the daughter of Clara and Maggie's half sister. She is a nurse at the Charitie hospital and discovers that the Nazis are euthanizing children with deformities. Working with a local priest, she looks for ways to save lives.

Maggie has just completed her SOE training following her prior mission protecting Princess Elizabeth. In London, she reconnects with Hugh for one night and finds that David has found Mr. Wright. However, her next mission comes quickly: carry radio supplies to Germany and plant a listening device in her mother, Clara's, study while attending party with a Nazi officer who is part of the underground resistance. Her mission is quickly completed at the party where she also meets Elise, but Maggie is offered a potential position with another Nazi official that seems too good to pass up.

The two women ultimately must work together to help Maggie and others escape but the results of the mission leave Maggie with physical and mental scars that may end her intelligence career.

book 3-KIRKUS REVIEWA dangerous trip to Berlin becomes a life-altering experience for a British spy.Maggie Hope is a Brit raised by an aunt in America who returned to London, where she learned many things about the supposedly dead parents she barely knew. Her father is a scientist working to break German codes, her mother a Nazi agent whom Maggie outwitted in her last adventure (Princess Elizabeth?s Spy, 2012). Now she has undergone rigorous training to be sent to Germany, where her quick wits and excellent German just may let her pull off a dangerous mission. She is parachuted into Germany, where she is posing as the girlfriend of Gottlieb Lerner, a Nazi who is really a devout Catholic involved with local priests working to thwart Nazi plans. Her job: deliver radio crystals and plant a microphone in the home office of her mother, Clara Hess. Maggie meets her half sister Elise, a nurse who has recently discovered that the government is busily carrying out their secret plan of race purification by killing children and others whom they consider defective in any way. Elise is boldly hiding a British pilot and the Jewish husband of a fellow nurse in her mother?s attic while working to find proof of the mass killings. When Maggie gets a chance to work for a Nazi involved in the program, a horrified Lerner tries to get her to return to Britain, but Maggie is determined to get proof that the program exists.Maggie continues her winning ways with more thrills and romantic problems, but this time, the horrors of her experiences add depth to the already pleasing adventures.

Oh dear. Such a disappointment. Partly because the series had been a bit on the fluffy, fuzzy side and with this book it is neither of those. It is dark and the main character loses her charm by the end of the book. Granted the story line is about the SOE and Hitler’s Germany (maybe too close to home to read?) but there is also an overwhelming thread of Catholicism from two of the characters to the point that there is much quoting of scripture. Given the fact that the CC was silently complicit to some extent, this is interesting. It was new to me, however, that two well known bishops and more priests did stand up and condemn Hitler and the camps. Nonetheless, this was a disturbing read in some ways: it seems to change its mood from the previous books; the main character undergoes a fundamental personality change; and the ending clearly hints at a sequel. The train went off the tracks for me. ( )

Wonderful third book in a series for which I anxiously await the fourth book!

Review listed here ( )

The third installment in this series is a little less fun and a little more dark than expected. That’s only because it exposes one of the most gruesome operations of the Nazis. The story revolves around how this exposé affects the lives of Maggie, Elise and Father Licht. Even on a broader level, this book describes how the actions in war might seem relevant during the situation but are more harder to accept in hindsight. Maggie’s character grows a lot in this book; she is courageous and able to quickly think on her feet in dangerous situations but she is still sensitive and finds it hard to reconcile with the evil in the world and her own actions. Even though there was hardly any mystery in this book, I think it’s a setup for character development and hopefully, better mysteries in the next books. ( )