It’s my stop today on the blog tour for Passport to Spy by Nancy Cole Silverman. Many thanks to Lori from Great Escapes Virtual Book Tours for the invite.
Title: Passport to Spy (A Kat Lawson Mystery #2)
Author: Nancy Cole Silverman
Published on: 6 June 2023
Genre: Historical Mystery
Buy on Amazon: Kindle
Passport to Spy is the second book in Nancy Cole Silverman’s Kat Lawson Mystery series.
What a fantabulous and totally engrossing mystery! I read the first book of this series a couple of weeks ago and I was eagerly waiting to catch up with the next installment. In the first book, Kat Lawson manages to lose her job (thanks to an affair with her boss) and then, finds herself as an undercover reporter for the FBI.
Kat’s handler is Sophie, and she has an assignment for her new trainee. Kat, on the pretext of writing an article about the Christmas festivities in Germany, is to visit Munich to keep an eye on Hans, a ladies-man/museum curator who’s suspected of hiding a cache of stolen masterpieces.
Hans’ maternal uncle was a notorious art thief named Otto Gerhardt. After his death, Hans and his sister Erika’s mother inherited the estate – along with various stolen masterpieces. When she passed away, the property was passed on to the siblings.
Otto was known to support the Nazis in stealing masterpieces from Jewish households during WW2. After a pact between Washington and Germany, if a stolen art is found, it is to be returned to the rightful owner.
Kat befriends a local reporter as soon as she reaches Munich. Though Kat’s assignment is to meet Hans on the first day of the art exhibition, she fails to do so, resulting in Sophie doubting her new trainee’s abilities. But Kat requests her for another chance. The next day, Kat ends up meeting Hans and gets invited to dinner that same evening.
Now, Hans is known to be a ladies’ man so Kat must make sure to not fall for his charms. There’s also a Russian goon in the mix and Kat wonders if she has fight not one but two opponents. As the story proceeds, we see Kat cross various hurdles – some of which are life-threatening. But Kat doesn’t want to give up. It’s her first assignment after all. Let her life be at stake but she wants to complete what she came to Munich for.
As I was reading through, it felt like a movie playing in my head. Nancy Cole Silverman is a master storyteller. At the end of the book, the author has mentioned what inspired her to write Passport to Spy – from her stay in Germany as a young army wife to coffee parties with fellow German wives to much more.
I really love the fact that the author takes inspiration for her stories from her real life. The first book in this series – The Navigator’s Daughter – was also inspired by a real-life story involving her father.
I was hooked on to this story from the start and couldn’t put it down until the end. Excellent plot-to-story development. Impressive character development (we meet Sandor and Aanika too – who first appeared in the previous installment.) Mystery to keep one guessing till the end. A dash of post-soviet-era spying and art thefts to keep one hooked. What else does a mystery lover want? 🙂
If you are looking for an engrossing, interesting, and unique mystery, I highly recommend you give Passport to Spy by Nancy Cole Silverman a try.
Additional Reading:
Series in order: Kat Lawson Mystery by Nancy Cole Silverman
Book #1: The Navigator’s Daughter by Nancy Cole Silverman
There’s a giveaway for this tour. Enter Rafflecopter Giveaway here.
The Book Decoder 