Booklist Review

Author: DIANE FANNING

Title: TREASON IN THE SECRET CITY

Publication: BOOKLIST ONLINE

Issue: 21ST JULY 2016

TREASON IN THE SECRET CITY, Author: Diane Fanning, Severn House
Price: $28.99, Pub Date: August 1, 2016, ISBN: 978-0-7278-861 5-6

It’s 1944, and Libby Clark is a research scientist at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, one of two sites (along with Los Alamos) where top-secret work is being done on the Manhattan Project. In this second novel in the series (following Scandal in the Secret City, 2014), the cousin of one of Libby’s colleagues has been charged with treason. But Libby’s colleague says it’s a trumped-up charge: his cousin, Frannie Snowden, a switchboard operator, merely did a favor for a friend. Was it Frannie’s fault that her friend was an enemy spy? To clear Frannie’s name, Libby must prove one of her fellow scientists is the traitor. Briskly paced and smartly written, the book pairs nicely with other novels dealing with Manhattan Project treachery (especially Martin Cruz Smith’s Stallion Gate, 1986) and with similar series starring female protagonists in WWII (Sarah R. Shaber’s Louise Pearlie series and Susan Elia MacNeal’s Maggie Hope series).