The Lipstick Bureau: A Novel Inspired by a Real-Life Female Spy

There are many historical novels that go back and forth between past and present. Gable could have made her book one of those, showing Niki’s daughter uncovering her mother’s work for the OSS and alternating with showing Niki’s work in the moment, so to speak. Instead, the “present” of the novel is a dinner in 1989, before some of Gable’s readers were even alive, and we get to see Niki’s thoughts as her daughter learns there is much more to her life than she ever dreamed.

(Things are complicated further by first-person interludes from an Italian prostitute named Paloma. I found this a fascinating inclusion, and it made me even more eager to see where the story would go.)

World War II novels, especially about women doing intelligence or subterfuge work in the European theater, seem to be a dime a dozen. Some are truly phenomenal. More wind up being dull and uninspired. The Lipstick Bureau falls in the middle. I enjoyed it a lot, but there were a few times where it felt rough and unpolished, even rushed. What mattered to me most, however, was that the story was an exciting one and the characters were fascinating.