Speakeasy
A Novel
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A WALTER SCOTT PRIZE ACADEMY RECOMMENDED BOOK OF 2018!
In this literate and action-packed historical thriller, set during World War II, a plucky code-breaker fights to keep a deadly secret as her Bonnie-and-Clyde past threatens to catch up with her.
Thirty-year-old Lena Stillman is living a perfectly respectable life when a shocking newspaper headline calls up her past: it concerns her former lover, charismatic bank robber Bill Bagley. A romantic and charming figure, Lena had tried to forget him by resuming her linguistic studies, which led to her recruitment as a Navy code-breaker intercepting Japanese messages during World War II.
But can Lena keep her own secrets? Threatening notes and the appearance of an old diary that recalls her gangster days are poised to upset her new life.
Whom can she really trust? Is there a spy among the code-breakers? And who is it that wants her dead?
“Alisa Smith’s novel Speakeasy, set in the thirties and forties, is written with great authority. A wonderful read, and very convincing.” —Richard Bausch, author of Something Is Out There and Peace
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Intriguing characters and an unusual setting lift this appealing debut novel from Canadian author Smith (Plenty: A Year of Eating on the 100-Mile Diet). During WWII, 30-year-old Lena Stillman, a Canadian government code breaker, deciphers Japanese military communications; a few years earlier, she was part of a gang of bank robbers led by charismatic psychopath Bill Bagley, her former lover. She fears that her past is catching up with her as Bill starts sending messages to her from his cell on death row. Alternating with Lena's story are chapters set during the early 1930s narrated by Byron Godfrey, another former gang member who was shaken out of a dull, law-abiding life by Bill. Their adventures, especially in the Canadian backwoods, are both upsetting and exhilarating, just as Lena and Byron show themselves to be simultaneously guilty and innocent. If things don't work out for them quite as expected, that's part of the book's na ve charm.
