Beverly Hills Spy: The Double-Agent War Hero Who Helped Japan Attack Pearl Harbor

Drawing on recently declassified files, historian Drabkin debuts with a riveting account of Frederick Rutland (1886–1949), a British WWI hero who spied for the Japanese on the eve of WWII. As a celebrated naval aviator—he was the first Royal Navy pilot to take off and land a plane from a ship in battle—Rutland developed a taste for publicity and a lifestyle beyond his reach. Overlooked in the peacetime British military, he offered his services to the Japanese Navy, who needed his technical knowledge to develop a carrier strike force. The Japanese later helped Rutland relocate to Los Angeles to spy on the U.S. Navy and develop an agent network. With the Japanese government funding his lavish lifestyle, he rubbed elbows with the most famous English actors in Hollywood at the time, including Alan Mowbray and Boris Karloff, who out of concern over Rutland’s behavior eventually contacted the FBI, and Charlie Chaplin, whose former butler Toraichi Kono became a key player in Japan’s espionage network. Shortly before the Pearl Harbor bombing, Rutland turned coat again, but his warning about the impending attack went unheeded by a distrustful FBI. Drabkin writes with a novelist’s flair, roving between far-flung ritzy settings (Hollywood, London, Tokyo) and notable personages (from J. Edgar Hoover to Amelia Earhart). Readers will be swept up. (Feb.)