The Lipstick Bureau

The Lipstick Bureau by Michelle Gable 464 pages

Normally, I’m a big fan of author Michelle Gable’s. I fell in love with her work with her debut novel, “A Paris Apartment;” then again with her fourth (“The Summer I Met Jack”) and fifth (The Bookseller’s Secret”) novels. This woman can write historical fiction!

In this, her sixth novel, we get a World War II saga that is based on the real life OSS operative Lauwers. It never fails to surprise me that with all the WWII-era books out there based on real figures that there is anyone left to influence a novel.

This one is a little different. Instead of resistance groups, concentration camps and those left behind on the home front, author Gable takes readers into the moral operations within the OSS (predecessor to the CIA).

Czech-born Niki Novotna has become an American, a newlywed with a failing marriage, and stationed in bomb-shattered, yet liberated Rome.  Her job is to write false propaganda that can dropped behind enemy lines. Looking as if the leaflets were produced in Germany, they disseminate such false information that Hitler is dead, the Allies are closer than then they think and the end of the war is very near.

Then Niki’s job is to get the prepared publications in the enemy’s hands.  That is the hard part! She comes up with a rather unorthodox way to get the information to the enemy, especially since the Air Force and the Army are more interested in dropping bombs than dropping propaganda. Her new idea borders on violating the Geneva Convention.

This book looks at the interactions of the Special Operations: Rome than how the enemy perceives the information.

Niki and her officemates are referred to as “The Lipstick Bureau,” but there were as many men in the office as women. Maybe it includes the “other” group of Italian women Niki paid to get the information out.

Y’all know how I love dual narratives. Most of the book takes place from 1943-45 and 1989. It doesn’t work. It wasn’t necessary and could have easily been deleted. However, it had to stay because this book is loosely based on the real-life operative, Barbara Lauwers, and their efforts to help win the war.

I found the office workings often tedious and lacking a forceful plot. Therefore, “The Lipstick Bureau” received 3 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.