Electra McDonnell

Electra McDonnell has always known that the way she and her family earn their living is slightly outside of the law. Breaking into the homes of the rich and picking the locks on their safes may not be condoned by British law enforcement, but World War II is in full swing, Ellie's cousins Colm and Toby are off fighting against Hitler, and Uncle Mick's more honorable business as a locksmith can't pay the bills anymore. So when Uncle Mick receives a tip about a safe full of jewels in the empty house of a wealthy family, he and Ellie can't resist. All goes as planned-until the pair are caught redhanded. Ellie expects them to be taken straight to prison, but instead they are delivered to a large townhouse, where government official Major Ramsey is waiting with an offer: either Ellie agrees to help him break into a safe and retrieve blueprints that will be critical to the British war effort, before they can be delivered to a German spy, or he turns her over to the police. Ellie doesn't care for the Major's imperious manner, but she has no choice, and besides, she's eager to do her bit for king and country. She may be a thief, but she's no coward. When she and the Major break into the house in question, they find instead the purported German spy dead on the floor, the safe already open and empty. Soon, Ellie and Major Ramsey are forced to put aside their differences to unmask the double-agent, as they try to stop allied plans from falling into German hands.

London, 1940. After years of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor-well, to themselves, anyway-Ellie McDonnell and her family have turned over a new leaf as they help the government's war effort. It's true that the straight-laced Major Ramsey didn't give them much choice, but still, Ellie must admit she doesn't miss breaking and entering as much as she might have thought. What she does miss is the challenge of unlocking an impossible code and the adrenaline rush that comes from being somewhere she shouldn't. So when Major Ramsey turns up unannounced with another job, she can't say no. A woman's body has been found floating in the Thames, with a bracelet locked onto her wrist and a cameo locket attached to it. It's clear this woman was involved in espionage, but whose side was she on? Who was she reporting to? And who wanted her dead?

As the Blitz continues to ravage London, Ellie McDonnell is approached by British Intelligence officer Major Ramsey with a new assignment. She is to travel under an assumed identity to the port city of Sunderland and there await further instructions. Ellie, ever-ready to aid her country, heads north, her safe-cracking tools in tow. But before she can rendezvous with the major, she witnesses an unnatural death. A man falls dead in the street in front of her, with a mysterious missive clutched in his hand. Ellie's instincts tell her that the man's death is connected in some way to her mission. After she is reunited with Major Ramsey, the pair discovers that the dead man had ties to a counterfeiting operation, supplying German spies with fraudulent British currency to use in their operations. Even more troubling, it quickly becomes apparent someone high-up in the operation is helping to smuggle those spies into England across the North Sea. Soon, Ellie and the major are locked in a battle of wits and a race against time with an unknown and deadly adversary. With German bombs dropping on the city and a would-be assassin shadowing their every move, it will take all of Ellie's resourcefulness and Major Ramsey's fortitude to unmask the spymaster and avert disastrous consequences, for England and for their own lives.

Safecracker Ellie McDonnell hasn't seen Major Ramsey, her handsome but aloof handler in the British government, since their tumultuous mission together two months before, but when she hears about a suspicious robbery in London, she feels compelled to contact him. Together they discover that a rash of burglaries in the city all lead back to a hotbed of spies in the neutral city of Lisbon, Portugal, and an unknown object brought to London by a mysterious courier. As the thieves become more desperate and their crimes escalate, it becomes imperative that Ellie and Ramsey must beat them at their own game. Fighting shadowy assailants, enemy agents, and the mutual attraction they've agreed not to acknowledge, Ellie and Ramsey work together to learn if it truly takes a thief to catch a thief.

The fifth and final installment in the Electra McDonnell series brings safecracker Ellie on a mission across World War II-era Europe to Lisbon, Portugal to rescue a key group of escaped POWs. Ellie McDonnell is about to embark on her most perilous mission yet: go to Lisbon, Portugal to save her beloved cousin Toby who has reportedly escaped from a German prisoner of war camp. Toby has been missing since the Battle of Dunkirk and Ellie had all but lost hope in ever seeing him again until Major Ramsey, the British military intelligence officer she had been working closely with over the past few months, shared the news he'd intercepted. Nothing will stop Ellie from finding her cousin, not even the awkward experience of having to travel to an unknown country with Ramsey after he'd dismissed her for being untrustworthy just as she'd realized she had fallen in love with him. Under the supervision of Captain Archie Blandings, a charming intelligence officer based in Lisbon, Ellie meets with undercover operatives to track down where Toby might be hiding from the Nazis and whether they are too late to safely recover him, all the while fighting her feelings for Ramsey and the incessant burden of war looming around her at every turn.