Louise’s Crossing

Set in February 1944, Shaber’s satisfying seventh WWII mystery (after 2016’s Louise’s Lies) finds Louise Pearlie, an employee of the Office of Strategic Services, on her way from Washington, D.C., to her new assignment in the London office, aboard the SS Amelia Earhart. Some of the other passengers have sailed on the ship before, among them a woman whose husband drowned on a trip three months earlier. Though it was ruled a suicide, shipboard gossips believe it was murder. When another passenger dies, Louise investigates and concludes that the two deaths may be related. The book’s main pleasure lies in the authentic details that depict Louise’s cultural, social, and physical world. Hardships such as food rationing are made real, as are the hazards of travel during the war, like U-boats. Shaber also addresses casual racism in the case of a “colored” stewardess, who expresses her desire to move to Britain to escape the segregation that exists in the U.S. This well researched novel provides insights above and beyond the crimes and their motives. Agent: Vicky Bijur, Vicky Bijur Literary. (May)