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.

 

 

Dragonfly

 Dragonfly by Leila Meacham 576 pages

Fiction writing 101: The author needs to know her/his character(s) like the back of her/his hand in order to know which details to leave in and which to leave in. Most of the time, readers never know the character(s) that in depth. But author Leila Macham put everything in this book. Often, putting in everything doesn’t work, but here it does. This is the first of hers (this is her eighth novel) that I have read, and I wonder if all her work is this detailed. Guess I’ll have to do a little research.

In 1942 America, five twenty-somethings receive a letter from the Office of Strategic Services [OSS] (forerunner to today’s CIA) asking them if they are willing to fight for their country. Note: This is not a draft notice.  They come from different parts of the country and have different careers. Yet, all are willing, especially after Pearl Harbor, to do their part.

The three men and two women have been carefully selected and report to “the man in brown.” Once they accept, they are given an OSS code name and a working name. Their operation is assigned the code name “Dragonfly.” Then they are dropped in Occupied Paris and embedded among high-ranking Nazis. Thank heavens Meacham provide a Cast of Characters before the story even begins, otherwise I would have been lost.

They communicate via a mural that one of the women paints on a blank convent wall, with permission of course, and a secret drop box located nearby.

The novel is broken into four parts: “The Recruits,” where readers get a lot of background information on the intrepid spies. Then Part Two is “The Missions,” where readers learn the groups’ objective. Next is “The Game” (1942-1944), the young spies at work. To me this section is the best as it had most tension because more was at stake. The last is “Home” (June 1944 – September 1962). Readers are brought full circle with the recruits and learn the end of their stories.

All-in-all, this was a good book. Not great, but good. I found it interesting enough to keep reading, but I took me a good three weeks to finish it. Highly unusual for me. And that is why Dragonfly receives 3 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.