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    Heart of Deception: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Heart of Deception: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Heart of Deception: A Novel
    Ebook362 pages6 hours

    Heart of Deception: A Novel

    By M.L. Malcolm

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “It has everything you want: suspense, adventure, and romance across several continents.”
    —Dorothea Benton Frank, New York Times bestselling author of Lowcountry Summer

    “Malcolm is a fabulous writer with an astonishing romantic clarity and captivating narrative style.”
    —International Herald Daily News

    Heart of Deception by M.L. Malcolm is the riveting sequel to the author’s critically acclaimed Heart of Lies. Based in part on her family’s actual history, Heart of Deception tells the intensely exciting story of a desperate Hungarian national who becomes an international spy in order to protect his loved ones during World War Two and beyond. A tale of espionage and intrigue, duty and destiny, it is an extraordinary saga that offers a richly evocative portrayal of a remarkable twentieth century epoch while delivering the page-turning historical suspense of James Clavell, Susan Howatch, and Ken Follett.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateApr 5, 2011
    ISBN9780062078919
    Unavailable
    Heart of Deception: A Novel
    Author

    M.L. Malcolm

    M. L. Malcolm has won several awards for short fiction, including recognition in the Lorian Hemingway International Short Story Competition, and a silver medal from ForeWord magazine for Historical Fiction Book of the Year. Malcolm has lived in Florida, Boston, Washington, D.C., France, New York, and Atlanta, and currently resides in Los Angeles.

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    Reviews for Heart of Deception

    3.5/5

    16 ratings5 reviews

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    • 3/5
      3.5 stars, but it didn't quite live up to the first book for me. Still, I'm looking forward to the next book.I need to be clear here. I enjoyed reading this book. I just was hoping for more. I liked all of the aspects that I wanted more from. If I didn't like them, then I could have just written them off. So for every issue I have, keep that in mind.Part of the problem was that I couldn't figure out what kind of book it was, so I could set my expectations accordingly. I love books that bend genres, but they have to blow away my expectations for all areas they touch.The spy story is great for a subplot, but isn't enough to sustain the book. Given the description of the book, I expected it to be more about Leo, but his sections weren't what dominated the book, at least for me.The other characters were interesting, but there weren't enough of them with the depth for an all out family drama. Maddy was almost enough to carry the book for me. While I didn't always like her or her actions, she did make an intriguing character to follow. I'm conflicted over whether I felt she was justified in her behavior toward her father (given what she knew, not what I as the reader knew). I don't know if I ever quite bought into her grand love affair, particularly her lover's side of it. I do think that there was depth here I didn't quite latch on to; a comparison between her and her mother, and the difference in the way they handled a sudden, all consuming passion.The other characters weren't as well fleshed out, and the only one I liked at all was Maddy's old Katherine.The stories that made up the plot were good, but scattered. They didn't necessarily connect up in a way that compelled me to see this as a cohesive book.In the end, I think much of this book is a bridge between the first book in the series and the next one, which I believe is the last. I'm certainly looking forward to reading it, and hope that it redeems the issues I had here.
    • 3/5
      I am normally terribly fussy about reading series books in the order in which they were meant to be read but occasionally I can be persuaded to ignore this tendency and read the one that is at hand. Somehow, I missed the information that Heart of Deception is a sequel to Heart of Lies and so I might never have known I was breaking my own rules except that I read the back of the book when I picked it up to read and that was all she wrote of my ignorance of the previous book. In a happy circumstance though, this book stood on its own perfectly well so I didn't have to worry too much about a backstory with which I was unfamiliar.Leo Hoffman is a spy and a damned good one. He's also a father who wants nothing more than to get back to his daughter. And if these two pieces of his life seem contradictory or mutually exclusive, they are. After his wife's death in a bombing in Shanghai, he sent their daughter Madeleine to the US and to safety with his new wife, a nasty, vindictive woman who wants revenge on Leo after he annulls their marriage. Maddy lives first with Amelia, the spurned wife, then with the family of a school friend, and finally with her mother's sister, a stern and emotionally cold woman. She has no knowledge of what her father does or where he is, indeed even if he's alive. In fact, in many cases, the people in her life actively try to poison her against her father. Leo meanwhile, is trying to be of enough use to the SOE (the WWII precursor to the CIA) to earn his American passport so he can rejoin the daughter he loves more than anything else.Although narrated mainly by Maddy and focusing on the life she leads in New York, feeling abandoned and confused without understanding why, the storyline does jump back to Leo's exploits as one of the most successful Allied spies during the war. Malcolm weaves real life characters into the narrative to add to the realistic feel of the tightness and interconnectedness of the world of espionage. However, the jumps away from Leo's life leave some gaps that would perhaps have best been filled in, especially in the case of Leo's time as a German prisoner of war given the emphasis on his and Maddy's Jewish heritage earlier in the book. The plotline following Maddy's life likewise has some underdeveloped portions. More plot driven than character driven, sometimes the characters' actions come from out of left field rather than as a logical development based on how they are drawn. Maddy's wild, all-consuming affair with Gene Mandretti is just one instance of this.Despite the flaws here and the characters I found not particularly likable, the story does gallop along and even when situations start to feel too far-fetched to be believable, it's impossible to put the book down. I finished this one in just a few short hours and while I could have wished for more fully developed characters and a few less coincidences, overall, it was an entertaining, fast-paced read.
    • 5/5
      Intrigue follows Leo Hoffman everywhere he turns. Never fully allowing himself to be known, he is forced to let his daughter believe he is who he is not while he carries out missions for the government. But who remembers him when his handler for the spy mission dies.Malcolm writes with knowledge and realism in this her latest historical fiction.I am looking forward to reading more from her
    • 4/5
      In the throes of World War II, Leo Hoffman is tired of his life as a spy, but he cannot retire until he successfully concludes the political intrigues he finds himself embroiled in. In Morocco, he must help prepare for the allied invasion into North Africa. Only when he has completed this task, will he earn himself a legitimate passport so he can return home to New York. There he hopes to reunite with his daughter, Maddie, whom he had sent to New York under the care of his paramour to protect her from the falling into the hands of the Nazis. Born of Jewish roots, Maddie is separated from everyone she knows because of the war. All Maddie knows is that her mother is dead and her father has abandoned her for some unknown reason. She does not know of her father’s secret life or of her mother’s family. Unwanted by her father’s lover, Maddie is sent to live with her best friend whose mother cares for her and provides her with a loving home. Then one day, her aunt, her mother’s sister, locates her and takes Maddie to live with her and her husband. There Maddie gets a sense of family. Her life is comfortable, her needs seen to, however, as she matures, she grows bitter at her father’s abandonment of her. As Maddie grows to womanhood and enters into personal liaisons of her own, she must learn who to trust as long buried secrets resurface. Although Heart of Deception is the sequel to Heart of Lies, the book can be read independently of the first. The reader will have no troubles following the plot or picking up the story. The plight of Maddie riveted me. The fact she is alone and innocent in the world except for a few people who truly care about her, endeared her to me. As Maddie grows to womanhood, she finds herself in love with two very different men and must choose between them. It is these relationships that I found intriguing. The author introduces characters slowly, revealing their personality and motives slowly, creating suspense as I read along, fully engrossed in the tale. The author’s prose and style of writing made the story easy to follow and hard to put down. If you like tales with a touch of intrigue, strong in family ties, and with colourful, unpredictable characters, this story is sure to satisfy. I found myself turning pages late into the night and highly recommend it.
    • 5/5
      Set in Elizabethan England, Vivian Swift and her brother, Nick, rule the underworld of the Southwark area of London. Viv is Queen of the Klink and oversees the smuggling, prostitution, gambling, thievery, and assorted crimes of that time in her own corner of London. She's an extremely strong character and I admired her which surprised me because I'm not a fan of criminals as heroes/heroines. But she is very loyal to Queen Elizabeth who she considers her counterpart. Into her domain comes Rafe Fletcher who earns her trust to become her bodyguard. But he is hiding secrets and eventually betrays her in the most intense emotional scenes. The book is filled with political intrigue, betrayals, treason, murder and revenge but it is very fast paced and totally absorbing. All the characters, both real and fiction, are three dimensional and complex. HOD was an compelling read and very hard to put down. Very steamy too. (Grade: A)