Cover image of "An Unquiet Peace," a historical private eye novel

During the year 1948 American history took a sharp turn into the future. The Soviet Union had imposed the Berlin Blockade, triggering the monumental, 11-month Berlin Airlift. Harry Truman won election outright as President, defying the pollsters. The CIA, founded only the year before, was filling its ranks. And rumor had it that the Soviet Union was about to announce a successful test of its first atomic bomb, vaulting the Cold War into a dangerous new phase. Against this backdrop, three OSS veterans who had served behind Nazi lines in World War II were building new lives in Los Angeles. And so it goes in scriptwriter and novelist Shaina Steinberg’s impressive historical private eye novel, An Unquiet Peace.

Three central characters span the social spectrum

Those three OSS veterans had served together in World War II. Steinberg’s story revolves around them.

The socialite executive

Evelyn Bishop was then an L.A. socialite, daughter of the multimillionaire founder of Bishop Aeronautics. It’s one of the country’s biggest companies. Yet now, three years after the war, her father has fled the country in disgrace, caught in a scandal. And Evelyn is the new president of the company. She’s brilliant and eminently qualified, with advanced training and detailed technical knowledge of the company’s aircraft. But she faces skepticism about her ability among her board, the public, and the press alike.

The tough private eye

Nick Gallagher met and fell in love with her on joint missions in Germany. Now they’re engaged to be married. For a time, before her father’s undoing, she had partnered with him as a private detective. They’re deeply committed to each other. But few outside their small circle of friends can understand the attraction. Nick comes from what was then called a “broken home,” and he grew up effectively an orphan on the streets. He looks like the tough guy private eye he’s become. So, there couldn’t possibly be a greater contrast between them.

The disillusioned FBI agent

Carl Santos, the third surviving member of their OSS team, has found work with the FBI. He’s uncertain he’ll stay with the Bureau because he’s unhappy with its mission to root out “Communists” who may have little or nothing to do with Communism.

The lives of all three principals grow more challenging when their former commanding officer in Berlin, General Henry Gibson, asks Evelyn to help out on clearing up a mystery lingering from the war. Meanwhile, Nick encounters an old friend from the distant past with a cry for help. Suddenly, he’s involved in a major new case. It’s an investigation that will bring him face to face with legions of crooked cops and gangsters from Mickey Cohen’s mob.

An Unquiet Peace (Bishop & Gallagher #2) by Shaina Steinberg (2025) 337 pages ★★★★☆

Photo of children welcoming food incoming to West Berlin during the Berlin Airlift, the backdrop to this historical private eye novel
For 11 months in 1948-49, the United States and Britain airlifted food and other necessities to the beleaguered people of West Berlin. The Soviet Union had engineered a blockade that prevented deliveries overland. It was a monumental undertaking, and it forms the backdrop of much of the action in this novel. Image: History.com

Two complex investigations unfold

An Unquiet Peace is the second in a series of novels featuring Bishop and Gallagher. In it, Steinberg spins out the action along two tracks. Evelyn contacts Karl Vogel, a rocket scientist she helped extricate from the Nazis and the Russians. General Gibson has told her the army received a message from Vogel’s long-lost family asking to reconnect with him. And she will fly with Vogel to Berlin to check out the story. Simultaneously, Nick’s childhood friend, Helen Brecker, was 15, three years his senior, when she inaugurated him into the world of sex. Now, she runs an upscale “gentlemen’s club” in a Brentwood mansion. Someone, probably a gangster named Joey Gallo, has beat up one of her girls. And she wants Nick to keep him from doing it again.

Complications galore ensue in both cases. These are complex stories full of gangsters, society ladies, dedicated army officers, educated and sophisticated prostitutes, Russian spies, and bent cops. But both Evelyn and Nick will come out on top at the end, of course. The novel is suspenseful to a fault. The ending, however, is just too sweet and tidy for my taste. But maybe a Hollywood scriptwriter couldn’t be expected to produce anything else.

About the author

Photo of Shaina Steinberg, author of this historical private eye novel
Shaina Steinberg. Image: author’s website

“Originally from Chicago,” she writes on her author website, “Shaina Steinberg graduated from Vassar College with a BA in English Literature. During and after college, she traveled extensively, including living abroad in Scotland and working in Colorado as a horse wrangler. She received her master’s degree from New York University . . .” Steinberg then took up a career in Hollywood as a scriptwriter for a number of popular TV series. She “currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband [and] son.”

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