Review: A Lesson in Secrets (Maisie Dobbs, #8)
Gaby Meares
This is the 8th book in the Maisie Dobbs series, which started shortly after the end of the First World War.
It’s now 1932, and there is political unrest in Europe that starts to spill across the channel to England. Discomfort regarding the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany is growing as more is learnt about its policies and inflammatory leader. Maisie is excited to find herself recruited by Scotland Yard’s Special Branch and the Secret Service to monitor activities ’not in the interest of the Crown’ in one of the Cambridge colleges. When the college’s founder and principal is murdered, Maisie finds herself immersed in a tangle of scandal and conspiracy.
As with the previous books in this fabulous series, Maisie’s way of approaching her work is nuanced and thoughtful: “She had often thought of the early stages of an investigation as something akin to working a tapestry; at times it was as if she were searching for loose threads so she could unpick the completed image to see what might lie underneath and how a certain play on light or colour was achieved. As with a tapestry, some crimes proved to be true masterpieces of deception.’
There are positive developments in Maisie’s personal life and even her beloved widowed father appears to be finally recovering from his sadness. When Maisie happens upon him sharing a pot of tea and laughing out loud with Mrs Bromley ‘Maisie felt a tear in her heart - one she had become so very used to accommodating - begin to mend again, as the glue of her father’s intermittent laughter sealed the jagged edges of unspoken grief.’
Jacqueline Winspear has written yet another outstanding Maisie Dobbs Novel, with her usual fine eye for historic detail and intriguing mystery . Highly recommended.