Maggie Hope’s 10th WWII adventure (after The King’s Justice in 2020), sends the shrewd British secret agent to Los Angeles in 1943 on a personal rather than wartime mission. Her former fiancé, John Sterling, needs help in proving that his lover’s drowning in the Garden of Allah Hotel swimming pool wasn’t, as the coroner would have it, an accidental death.

Maggie has barely felt her first kiss of Southern California sunshine before chemist Linus Pauling has assisted her in labeling the drowning a murder, and a grim one at that. In fact, the city, past the sun, sand, and celebs, is a nightmarish place where not only do Black lives not matter, Aryan supremacy is on the march according to local slogan, “The cops and the Klan go hand in hand.” (Susan Elia MacNeal, say hello to James Ellroy!)

In this series, fictional characters often mix it up with real folk, so, in addition to Pauling, Maggie gets to meet John’s boss Walt Disney, Garden of Allah guest Robert Benchley, Howard Hughes, Lena Horne, and a cast of, well, hundreds. While British-accented narrator Susan Duerden doesn’t attempt celebrity impersonations, her collection of American voices is impressive, and in the case of gruff L.A. lawmen, surprisingly guttural. As interpreted by Duerden, MacNeal’s Maggie is a likeable, spunky heroine who does not suffer fools or corrupt cops. Her investigation proceeds at an intriguing if moderate clip, with witnesses, suspects, and anti-Axis Angelinos dying right and left. But the action turns feverish when frequent appearances of The Great Gatsby first editions trigger Maggie’s long suit, codebreaking. Case closed, and she’s off to Madrid and book 11.