The DeValera Deception
A Winston Churchill Mystery by Michael McMenamin and Patrick McMenamin
Review: Readers expecting the father/son writing team of Michael McMenamin and Patrick McMenamin to turn Winston Churchill into an amateur sleuth in The DeValera Deception may alternately be relieved and disappointed. Churchill, though he is present throughout much of the book, actually plays a relatively minor role here, the focus being on investigative reporter Bourke Cockran and photojournalist Martha "Mattie" McGary.
"Churchill had been looking forward to his trip to North America [in the late summer of 1929]. Three months of rest, relaxation, writing and painting, all in the luxurious comfort of private railway cars and four-star hotels. The newspaper articles he would write along the way would not only pay for the journey but generate a tidy profit. Perfect. And now the Prime Minister had made it even better. All this and an adventure to boot. And with an old nemesis Churchill knew well, the IRA. He could hardly believe his good fortune ..." With this as a premise, Churchill writes to the (fictional) son of a man he called his political mentor, US Representative William Bourke Cockran. Named for his father, Bourke Cockran is a writer reporting on the state of reparations in Europe following the end of the Great War. Churchill asks Bourke to meet him in Montreal in upon his arrival in North America, where he wants to ask for his help in tracking down the financial sources for arms to be supplied to the IRA. More conflict with Ireland is the last thing the British need, who fear Germany is allying itself with Russia to rebuild its economy and military strength and would prefer to focus on providing for the security of Poland to act as a buffer between to the two nations.
Bourke meets Mattie by accident, but the two strike up a quick, professional friendship, one that will tap both their talents as they cross the country to California, all the time learning what Churchill needs to know.
The DeValera Deception works well as both historical fiction (there are a lot of real characters and factual events presented here, so many that it's easy to forget Bourke and Mattie are fictional) and adventure thriller. Using Churchill as a private citizen during his "Wilderness Years" (his party is out of power in England at this point in time) as a pivot point for the plot he did, indeed, travel across the United States in 1929 and visited William Randolph Hearst in California, who was sponsoring the Graf Zeppelin on its around-the-world voyage helps keep the storyline grounded and credible. Crisply written and meticulously researched, The DeValera Deception is a remarkably well-crafted adventure story.
Acknowledgment: Enigma Books provided an ARC of The DeValera Deception for this review.
Review Copyright © 2010 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved
Location(s) referenced in The DeValera Deception: New York City, Montreal, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Jersey
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The DeValera Deception by Michael McMenamin and Patrick McMenamin
Publisher: Enigma Books
Format: Hardcover
ISBN-10: 1-936274-08-6
ISBN-13: 978-1-936274-08-6
Publication Date: October 2010
List Price: $23.95
Synopsis (from the publisher): In the summer of 1929 Weimar Germany still has a secret military agreement with the USSR to develop new weapons beyond the Ural Mountains. Ultimately, both want to dismember the newly revived independent Poland, but to distract Britain from helping the Poles, the new Irish Free State is placed at risk by conspirators and arms dealers intent on fomenting an IRA coup d'้tat.
Winston Churchill is about to travel to North America when the new Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald asks him to handle a secret assignment. The IRA intends to buy large quantities of arms in the United States and an SIS team will investigate. Churchill is to enlist American President Herbert Hoover to prevent the weapons from reaching Ireland. But Churchill has his own unofficial team gather evidence as well.
Bourke Cockran Jr., a law professor and former military intelligence agent, is the son of Churchill's old Irish American mentor. Mattie McGary, Churchill's goddaughter, works for William Randolph Hearst. Attracted to each other, their tempers often clash as Cockran and Mattie follow a trail from New York to Los Angeles through Canada to discover who is funding the IRA and where the arms are assembled.
But Mattie is also keeping secrets from Cockran, who has an agenda of revenge: to kill the leader of the IRA team who is responsible for the murder of his wife in the Irish Civil War. These plans interfere with foiling the arms shipment and an IRA plot to assassinate Churchill. And time is running out ...