‘Lake County’ by Lori Roy. Thomas & Mercer, 312 pages, $28.99
Echoes of Carson McCullers and a soupcon of Flannery O’Connor filter through Lori Roy’s superb “Lake County,” her sixth novel. The coming-of-age novel looks at fame, celebrity worship and unbridled ambition wrapped in a solid story about Florida during 1955.
Addie Anne Buckley is anxious to escape Hockta, a fictional small town in Lake County that Roy sets somewhere in Central Florida, “about 45 minutes” from Tampa. Addie loves her parents, Inez and Harden, but wants more. She sees her mother’s choices to be a wife and mother as a “trap.” Addie longs “to be somebody and not the nobody” she feels she is.
Addie’s dream may hinge on her 18th birthday present — a six-week trip she’s planned with her visiting Aunt Jean. The plan is to travel to California and then to New York where she and Jean will walk the red carpet for the opening of the movie “Seven Year Itch.” Addie doesn’t plan to return to Hockta.
Jean is not Addie’s aunt by blood or marriage but grew up with Inez in foster care in California and they consider each other family. The rest of the world knows Jean as Marilyn Monroe, who revisits Hockta where she “clawed her way back to normal” when Hollywood became overwhelming. But Jean’s idyllic rest is marred by foul-tempered photographer Siebert Rix, who owes his career to those first pictures he took of Marilyn. Siebert’s obsession with Marilyn grows increasingly violent as this hanger-on knows he is “nothing” without her.
“Lake County” also centers on Addie’s boyfriend, Truitt Holt, who has a low-level “measly” bolita gambling game and who accidently runs afoul of the Tampa mob.
Roy skillfully pulls the two plot threads together while finding the humanity in each of her complex characters who are full of contradictions. Marilyn/Jean embraces fame but is repulsed by it, fearful of being “ordinary;” kind and caring about the Buckleys and Hockta but also thoughtless and cruel. She easily flips from different personalities as the situation requires. But is she being an actress or herself?
An incident once turned Addie’s loving, gentle father into “someone none of us had ever seen” before he returned to normal. Addie wants a glamorous life but also worries she may not have the “gumption” to follow her dream. Truitt cares deeply for his mother, using his gambling proceeds only for daily expenses while saving the rest. He reveres his father, who was murdered by the mob when he was 6-years-old, but also remembers how he was brutal toward his mother. A grocery store clerk avidly reads movie magazines, escaping her “wafer-thin life.”
“Lake County” eloquently captures Florida’s sights, sounds and smells such as the orange groves. Though Addie longs to escape “the sugary scent of orange blossoms that dripped in the air.”
Roy, a two-time Edgar winner, again delivers an outstanding novel in “Lake County.”
Behind the plot: Characters in “Lake County” are fictional with two exceptions — Marilyn Monroe, of course, but also Charlie Wall, who has a small but pivotal role. Wall is considered to be the “godfather” of Tampa’s organized crime; his 1955 murder remains unsolved. Ace Atkins, who Roy credits in her acknowledgements, wrote about Wall in his novel “The White Shadow.”
Series finale
‘The Last Hope’ by Susan Elia MacNeal. Bantam, 304 pages, $29
In the best long-running mystery fiction series, the lead characters change, their personalities, careers and outlooks on life evolve. This is certainly true of Susan Elia MacNeal’s Maggie Hope novels, set during WWII.
As the title suggests, “The Last Hope” is the finale to this 11-novel series that began with “Mr. Churchill’s Secretary,” set in 1940. In that debut, Maggie Hope was a typist for Winston Churchill, but her mathematical skills allowed her to break a vital code that led her to a career in intelligence and missions around the globe.
The intelligent, perceptive Maggie has proven herself to be an expert spy, willing to take on dangerous assignments. Two final missions occupy Maggie in “The Last Hope,” which is set in 1944.
Kim Philby, the head of the Iberian Section of MI6, wants Maggie to travel to Spain to assassinate German physicist Werner Heisenberg, winner of the 1932 Nobel Prize. The Allies believe that Heisenberg is developing an atomic bomb for the Nazis.
Maggie is well versed in the nuances of espionage, but she has severe moral qualms about assassinating the scientist. But Heisenberg’s research could change the outcome of the war in favor of the Nazis. She finally agrees, but only if she can learn that Heisenberg is definitely working on the bomb and it is not a rumor.
Maggie also has been asked by Coco Chanel to deliver an important message to Winston Churchill. The famed designer saved Maggie’s life back in 1941, but Chanel has become so closely affiliated with the Nazis that she’s believed to be a spy.
A stalwart of MacNeal’s series is how she meticulously weaves real figures and facts into solid stories that respect the history while making her plots authentic and thrilling. Kim Philby did indeed oversee an aspect of British espionage. Werner Heisenberg was a pioneer in the theory of quantum mechanics (and, yes, Heisenberg’s surname was the alias for Walter White in the drama “Breaking Bad.”) It’s been well documented that Coco Chanel was a spy for the Nazis, complete with a designated agent number and a code name; she also had ties to the British Royal Family. The current Apple TV+ series “The New Look” focuses on Chanel’s time during WWII though some plot aspects have been disputed. MacNeal also documents her research at the end of “The Last Hope.”
MacNeal’s series also has persuasively explored how WWII affected soldiers and civilians, making the novels relevant no matter the war.
“The Last Hope” ends this much-admired series on a high note with panache and a memorable plot.
