Review: FOR THE LOVE OF MARY

FOR THE LOVE OF MARY by Carne Maxwell (2023)

Reviewed by Carolyn McKenzie

She will risk everything to expose the truth

1943 – Bletchley Park, England. Mae Webster, immersed in the clandestine world of codebreaking at Bletchley Park, is recruited to help unveil a spy who’s on the brink of exposing Britain's most guarded secret, the cracking of the Enigma code. As war rages around her, Mae's life takes an unexpected turn when she falls in love with the enigmatic New Zealand war photographer Jack Knight. Their relationship develops at pace, but tragedy strikes when one of Jack's photographs risks unmasking an elusive double agent. 

1989 – Berlin, Germany. Rachel Talbot, a globetrotting photojournalist, ventures into the heart of a fractured Berlin in search of the Stasi officer whom her beloved grandmother Mae blames for betraying their family. Rachel finds herself entangled in the East German uprising and is irresistibly drawn to a charismatic activist. As the Cold War threatens to boil over, Rachel races to expose a traitor before it’s too late.

In spite of the title, it’s hard to love Mary. And she certainly can’t be trusted. She’s calculating, conniving and dishonest. She’s blithely deceiving her husband, Peter, causing her parents grief, betraying her friends and generally being objectionable. 

Set in and around the wider Auckland area, For the Love of Mary is the third book in ‘The Contest Trilogy’ which began with The Contest, followed by Redemption. Although For the Love of Mary is described as a standalone read, I found it confusing at times not knowing the various families’ back stories and how their lives have been interwoven since The Contest began. Maxwell uses a clever ploy on page 6 when Terrance attempts to summarise events from the previous two books in some ‘notes to self’ spanning a period of around 10 years. This highlights the fact that wherever there has been trouble, Mary has frequently been in its centre.

Now Mary’s former husband is in prison and Terrance is trying to persuade the police that Mark is innocent. 

As the story unfolds, for all Mary’s faults, it becomes evident that real evil exists elsewhere. Taking a break on the Awhitu Peninsula some of the characters are soon in terrible danger. Maxwell describes the Peninsula landscape vividly: the narrow roads, the deep gullies, the sheer cliffs plunging into the sea. Maxwell skilfully draws us into the dramatic events that occur so that the reader is gathered up in the urgency and horror, desperation and fear of the moment. The Contest and Redemption back stories become irrelevant and For the Love of Mary actually blossoms as a standalone. 

The improbability of some events aside, Maxwell handles depravity, darkness and foreboding with skill. The book ends with Terrance making a decision that some will consider dubious at best – he’s entangled in a real “What would I do?” dilemma.

Whereas in The Contest there was nastiness and stupidity at every turn and a huge body count, and Redemption was hard to fathom without reading The Contest, For the Love of Mary is much more focused and plot development is more structured. A pared down body count proves that less really is more: when death and wickedness strike, they are all the more shocking for being unexpected.

This review was first published in FlaxFlower reviews, which focuses on in-depth reviews of New Zealand books of all kinds, and is reprinted here with the kind permission of Flaxflower founder and editor Bronwyn Elsmore.