Evelyn is hard at work as president of Bishop Aviation but is able to fit in a search for the lost wife and daughter of a scientist she and Nick helped escape from Berlin. Nick is hired by an old friend to investigate the disappearance if their employees. Parts of the story were predictable, but the characters are engaging and the plot gives you just enough of an escape but isn’t too gritty. It’s also fun to get away to an imaginary world where you know everything will work out for the main characters.

Thank you Netgalley for a free ARC in return for an honest review.

I really liked that this book about post WWII. It was well written and well plotted and just an overall good book about the period after the war .
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me review this book

A post WWII mystery. Even though the war is over, there are still illegal things going on. Very interesting and well written.

Los Angeles, late 1948, and our hero Evelyn Bishop is running Bishop Aeronautics like a champ while her father remains in exile. She's focused on the company but can't quite stop dipping a toe in the private investigator pool now and then. It's easy because her fiancé Nick Gallagher has taken over her PI agency. There's a wedding on the horizon (that is, if her aunt doesn't drive them crazy with too much planning) but much more interestingly there's a mystery afoot!

It seems that one of the missions that Evelyn, Nick, and their pals Carl and David undertook when they were all part of the Office of Strategic Services during WWII was the rescue of Kurt Vogel, a highly regarded German aerospace scientist. The rescue didn't go as planned and six years later Professor Vogel has just received some rather startling news. The Army calls in a few favors and soon Evelyn's heading to Berlin in the middle of the infamous Berlin Airlift (late 1948). Meanwhile, Nick has bumped into a woman from his past who he'd never expected to see again. She's running a gentlemen's club and things haven't been going as smoothly as she'd like.

Can Nick help her out? Can Evelyn figure out what's going on with Dr. Vogel? Will they manage to say "I do" before the book finishes?

I enjoyed this second Evelyn & Nick mystery quite a bit, finding it as charming and breezy as Steinberg's first novel. I wouldn't be surprised to find it turned into a popular - and romantic - TV series either. And I'd watch it. Recommended.

Logan Bishop was president of Bishop Aeronautics, but when he had to go into hiding his daughter, Evelyn, became president. She had served in the military with the OSS. That's where she met and fell in love with Nick, who had grown up on the streets.

Kurt Vogel was a German Jew and a scientist that the United States needed. Evelyn and Nick were tasked with the job of smuggling him into the United States. He had a family, a wife and a daughter. They separated him from his family to smuggle him out with the understanding that they would follow shortly. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. His family never showed up. There was a general who was responsible for getting his family out, but he failed. Kurt contacted Evelyn and asked her to go back to Germany to locate his family. He also wanted the general to go. While they were there, the Jeep they were traveling in exploded. Evelyn survived but the general died. It was clearly an attempt on someone's life.

Nick was a private investigator. He had grown up on the streets with his friend Helen, who had eventually opened a gentleman's club. One day, she showed up at Nick's agency and told him that one of her girls had been beaten badly. She wanted Nick to find out who had done it. And not long thereafter, another one of her girls was beaten practically to death. Nick assumed it was the mob and had one of them arrested. So now the mob was after Nick. Helen had hired Julia to be her bartender. Julia was a very decent young woman who never slept with any of the men that frequented the club. Julia was kidnapped and Nick was tasked to find out who was responsible.

All the while, Evelyn's saga continued. It turns out, the Jeep being blown up was an attempt to kill her and the general. There was yet another attempt on her life but she escaped. It seems someone drove a car into the door of her house and the car exploded causing the house to burn down.

This author's attempt at creating a book that was filled with suspense, espionage and even a decent love story was not lost on me. She did a stellar job telling the tale and her methodology of keeping the story fresh And inviting kept me coming back for more. I had a hard time putting this book down. I really like her style and would love to read more of her books. I gave it five stars. I wish I could have given it. 10.

This is a strong follow-up to the first in this series, and again it’s a thoroughly enjoyable look at the aftermath of WWII, both personal and political. You could read this as a standalone but it will make more sense and have more meaning if you have read the first. Evelyn and Nick are now engaged and get drawn into two separate cases, one leftover from their spy work during the war and one more local, with ties to Nick’s past. Both story lines are well done, and I like that the author never tried to make them overlap but instead kept both moving along at pace. The characters and their relationships continue to grow, and the details of the time period add a richness to the story. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy. All views are entirely my own and offered voluntarily.

This was a strong entry in the Bishop & Gallagher Mystery series, it had that feel that I was looking for and enjoyed that it had that spy element that I wanted. I thought the use of the late-1940s element was great and that the character was a former spy. It added to the element that I was hoping for and was hooked from the first page. Shaina Steinberg has a strong writing style and was glad I got to read this, I hope there is more in this series and from Shaina Steinberg.

4.5 stars, rounded up.

Under the Paper Moon, the first book in Shaina Steinberg's Bishop & Gallagher Mystery series, was one of my absolutely favorite reads this year, and I was thrilled to get an ARC of its sequel, An Unquiet Peace.

Set in 1948 Los Angeles, the series follows Evelyn Bishop and Nick Gallagher, who worked together as spies for the OSS during WWII. Having fallen in love during the war, only to break up over a perceived betrayal at its end, they're drawn back together in Under the Paper Moon, having to team up as private investigators to solve a murder. Now engaged, Evelyn and Nick are pulled into two new mysteries in An Unquiet Peace, Nick searching for a kidnapping victim who works for his long-lost childhood friend, and Evelyn trying to track down the missing family of a German scientist they helped escape Berlin during the war. I really love these characters and their relationship (which I was very glad to see remained strong through the book, avoiding the common sequel pitfall of breaking up or having serious issues for the sake of drama), and adored seeing more of them. I'm also a huge film noir fan and love the postwar Los Angeles setting, which is really finely drawn and—as in all LA noirs—an essential part of the story.

That said, one thing that didn't work as well for me in this one as in the first (the main reason it wasn't a quite a five star read for me) is that I was really hoping for more of Evelyn and Nick working together to solve the mystery, when for much of the book, they're each investigating separate cases, largely on their own. My favorite variety of mystery is those starring love interests solving crimes together, and that's part of what drew me to this series—along with the fantastic LA noir vibes. I really love the dynamic of a couple who aren't just romantic partners, but also have to rely on each other and work as a team investigating, facing danger together, and so on. That dynamic was one of my favorite parts of Evelyn and Nick's relationship in the first book, from their past as spy partners to their investigation of that book's central murder. That's still present in An Unquiet Peace (more in the last third or so, when they start participating more in each others' cases), but up until then, it felt like they were mostly just doing their own thing, when I really wanted to see more of them together. [Slight spoiler] I also kept expecting both cases would end up intersecting, but that never happened, they remain separate and unrelated through the end.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed An Unquiet Peace, and very much recommend it to fans of Under the Paper Moon. To anyone new to this series, I would definitely recommend reading the first book before this one; though the mystery is new/relatively standalone, I do think the book works best with a good knowledge of the characters. I'm greatly anticipating more books with Evelyn and Nick (though hope to see them working as a team more in the next)!