cover image An Unquiet Peace

An Unquiet Peace

Shaina Steinberg. Kensington, $27 (336p) ISBN 978-1-4967-4782-2

Steinberg’s sprightly second outing for engaged ex-spies Evelyn Bishop and Nick Gallagher (after Under the Paper Moon) delivers on the promise of its predecessor. It’s 1948, and Evelyn has taken the reins of her family’s California aeronautics business, while gumshoe Nick pounds the mean streets of L.A. Evelyn gets a break from her new role when Gen. Henry Gibson, her wartime commander, gives her a call. Six years earlier, Evelyn and Nick extracted chemist Kurt Vogel from Berlin, though Vogel’s wife and daughter had to be left behind. Now, Vogel has received a postcard from Germany supposedly written by his wife, but Gibson suspects that it’s a fake, sent by the Soviets to lure Vogel back to Berlin so they can harness his scientific discoveries for their own gain. Evelyn travels to Germany to investigate, using her role as company president as cover. Meanwhile, Nick gets enmeshed in a murder case that threatens to put him on the wrong side of L.A. mob boss Mickey Cohen, and may implicate key figures on the LAPD. Steinberg irons out the first novel’s kinks, delivering a smoother blend of rom-com and thriller with many more narrative surprises. Fans of David Baldacci’s Aloysius Archer series should check this out. Agent: Kathryn Green, Kathryn Green Literary. (Apr.)