Items related to Murder in the Map Room
Synopsis
It is 1943, and a wartime visit from Madame Chiang Kai-Shek has thrown the White House into a frenzy of preparation. Eleanor Roosevelt accommodates Madame's entourage, serves the finest meals rationing allows, and accompanies the smooth-tongued General's wife from social functions to sessions of Congress. The terror in Europe shows no sign of abating, and the United States cannot commit to focusing solely on Asia, despite Madame's wishes. The First Lady must walk a fine line between defending the country's interests and offending her guest. When a shoe salesman is found dead in the Map Room, however, his throat slit from ear to ear, her diplomatic resolve begins to crumble. What was a shoe salesman doing in the White House, mere feet from Madame Chiang Kai-Shek's bedroom? And who on earth killed him? As Eleanor and the Secret Service are drawn deeper and deeper into the mystery, the questions multiply. The shoe companies have no records of Chinese salesmen, and there is a high level of opium in the victim's blood. Madame Chiang Kai-Shek's staff is involved in some way, but how? And who is the beautiful Asian woman in the photograph in the victim's pocket?
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
Elliot Roosevelt, son of Franklin and Eleanor, was a former writer and rancher. He died in 1990 but left behind a number of unpublished manuscripts to be enjoyed by readers in the years to come.
Reviews
Still another room in FDR's White House is profaned by an unseemly corpse, this one of inoffensive wholesale shoe salesman George Shen, who certainly had no business in the White Houseand who left no record, despite stiff wartime security, of ever having signed in. So alongside the relatively feeble mystery of whodunit (think Japanese spies, secret codes, little red pills with unintended side effects) lies the considerably more clever mystery of how-did-he-get-in. The role of the First Lady, the nominal heroine of a series that's outlived her author son's death (Murder at Midnight, 1997, etc.), is subordinated to those of Secret Service agent Robert Kirkwal and D.C. Chief of Detectives Captain Edward Kennelly, both of whom find themselves, for security reasons, abruptly named Commanders in the Naval Reserve. But the real star here is Soong Mei-ling, Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, on an official visit to importune the US to deflect more of its war effort from the European theater to the Japanese, who are harassing her husband, the corrupt Generalissimo who prattles of peace and freedom while hiding behind his scant divisions back in his petty fiefdom. The tangled, predictable plot, with its legions of sinister Orientals, springs to life every time Madame Chiang sweeps into the room. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.