It was a bitter-sweet experience to read this 18th instalment of Winspear’s wonderful Maisie Dobbs series. as it is her last.
From the first book, I felt an affinity with Miss Dobbs, and a yearning to be a little bit more like her: her empathy, patience and grace are well worth aspiring to. Throughout this series, we have travelled beside her through war, and loss and grief, and then hope. Winspear has used this series to explore many issues, particularly to do with the trauma inflicted by war, and the long term effects after the war is over. She has led me to further related reading: a sure sign that a book is not only engaging, but draws you to seek more knowledge.
Winspear has done a wonderful job of bringing all our favourite characters into this final book, and sharing with us, her readers, what is in store for them all.
I was fortunate enough to be in the UK when this book was released, and purchased a hardback copy in Cambridge: this is a book that I will not be giving away. It’s a fitting memento of my time in England.
CODA: If you are new to Maisie Dobbs, don’t start with this book! It is a series that benefits from being read in order to fully appreciate the character development and changes in society that often drive the narrative.

I am a huge fan of Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series so was excited to see what she would do with another heroine. But I must admit I am a little disappointed in this book. Elinor White has quite similar experiences to my beloved Maisie, however, she is lacking the charm and whimsy that makes the Maisie books so appealing.

Elinor White finds herself working for the underground in Belgium during the First World War when she is just a slip of a girl. She proves to be courageous and quite fearless when the need arises. Her services are again called upon during the Second World War. After that war, she lives a quiet and solitary life in a Kentish village, until she finds herself drawn to the aid of her neighbours who are being bullied by a London gang.

I really wanted to like this book, but having read it only a few weeks ago, I am struggling to remember the plot, or the characters. Perhaps its just me - I hope so!

Thank you Jacqueline Winspear for the gift of Maisie Dobbs. I always feel the world is a better place once I’ve spent some time with Maisie. She is an inspiration; I wish I could be as kind and thoughtful as Maisie is!

This is another cracking good mystery for Maisie to unravel - and the most confusing by far! However, as always, Maisie applies her well-honed skills to the puzzle and successfully finds the answers.

We’re still in the heart of WW2 and all that entails: rationing of food and petrol; blackout curtains; removal of street signage, air-raids and anxiety about loved-ones who are fighting. As the characters ‘just get on with it’, I couldn’t help but think of the world’s current situation with Covid, and how we have all embraced this attitude in the face of extraordinary times.

I love how Winspear uncovers unusual aspects in history, in this case the many women pilots who flew for the Air Transport Auxiliary in Britain, ferrying military aircraft between factories, repair units and airfields. She also explores the impact that American military servicemen arriving on British soil had on the locals, who couldn’t understand the American MPs insisting on segregating the coloured servicemen. It’s this sort of research that elevates the Maisie Dobbs series way above the other historic mysteries that are available on the bookshelves. Another writer of historic fiction, [a:Sarah Waters|25334|Sarah Waters|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1409248454p2/25334.jpg], describes these details as ‘poignant trivia’.


Again, Winspear has given her readers a fabulous mystery, with characters we have come to love over the previous sixteen novels. I can’t wait for the next instalment!

It’s 1941 and the blitz is devastating London. Winspear is at her best when describing what the war experience must have been like, particularly for those on the home front, and how fear becomes all pervasive.

‘Fear, she thought, had a viscous quality to it, to the extent that you could even feel it in your feet as you were running to the shelter; a burden slowing you down, despite the fact that you were moving as fast as your legs could carry you. Fear was sticky, like flypaper, something to steer clear of as you went about your business, because if you were sucked into that long banner of worry, you would be like an insect with wings adhered and feet stuck, never to escape.’

Are you a fan of Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs novels? Well then this is for you! Its a companion to the series, containing many quotes from the books, with Winspear extrapolating on the inspiration for these nuggets of wisdom, together with plenty of space for the reader to jot down their own thoughts.
This is a book to own, so you can use it as a journal, reflecting on your own insights inspired by the quotes. It would make an ideal gift for a fan of Maisie Dobbs.

Fans of the Maisie Dobbs series will not be disappointed in this latest book. Set during the German blitzkrieg upon Britain during WW2 all the action is affected by these relentless attacks. Reading this novel in the midst of our pandemic, it was easy to relate to Maisie’s world, where there is constant threat, but yet life continues. Maisie ‘admonishes herself for selfishly considering a dilemma of a personal nature when so many civilians had been killed and injured’.

Maisie and her dearest friend Priscilla are volunteer ambulance drivers in London and are accompanied one night by an American war correspondent, Catherine Saxon, who is determined to tell the American people what is really happening in Britain. America had not yet jointed the allied forces, and many Americans, included their high profile ambassador Joseph Kennedy, believe that it is not their war to fight.

When Catherine is brutally murdered, Maisie is asked by her old Scotland Yard colleague, Robbie MacFarlane to investigate, together with an agent from the US Department of Justice. Mark Scott helped Maisie escape Munich in 1938, and Maisie in unsure of her feelings towards him.

As Maisie tries to uncover the truth behind Saxon’s murder, she is also applying to adopt Anna, a young evacuee who has come under her care, and whom she has grown to love as her own.

Winspear has again skilfully balanced Maisie’s investigation with her personal life. Real historic events and people add an authenticity to all her books. I loved the quotes from Edward R. Murrow’s reports from London. Murrow has always been a hero of mine (anyone who has seen the film, Goodnight and Good Luck will understand why). Like the character Catherine Saxon, he was determined to make sure Americans were made aware of the daily horror that the British were facing.

The American Agent is historic crime fiction at its best. By writing about characters that we care about, in a historic context, Winspear makes the history resonate with meaning.

Winspear has managed to cram a lot into this instalment of the wonderful Maisie Dobbs’ mysteries. Maisie is asked to investigate the disappearance of Joe, the youngest son of the local publican, who is subsequently found dead - was it an accident or was it murder? Joe was apprenticed to a company who were using a new fire-retardant paint for army buildings. Did this paint contribute to his death?
Meanwhile, WW2 is in full swing, and we get a taste of how the British felt as an invasion by Hitler’s forces was imminent. British troops are stranded at Dunkirk, and their rescue by a flotilla of local boats becomes very personal for Maisie.
Winspear’s research raises this series above the rest. She discovers small details that are not commonly known and uses these to make her books that much more interesting and involving. I always read her acknowledgements, as she often tells me why she included certain details - often they are inspired by stores her parents and grandparents related about their war experiences.
I have been binging on these books, and am very concerned that there is only one more to read! I highly recommend this series, and strongly suggest that it be read in order to gain the most from the experience.

Reading this instalment of Maisie Dobbs at this moment in history feels so apposite. It begins in 1939 with Britain declaring war and the general feeling of fear and uncertainty that follows is exactly how our world feels now.

As always, Winspear paints pictures with her words and you can see Maisie and her colleagues as they investigate a series of murders of former Belgian refugees. There is the usual intrigue, and all our familiar characters are in play. If you have followed Maisie from the start, these people are a bit like family and you will care very much what happens to them all.

In this Grave Hour is another engrossing novel from Winspear. Maisie is living through an extraordinary time in history, as we all are now.

I love Maisie Dobbs, I really do, but Journey to Munich was such a disappointment.
It was her incomprehensible behaviour that spoilt this book. Her behaviour in Munich when supposedly working undercover for the British Secret Service is ridiculous, and considering the political situation at the time, would surely have had her ‘disappear’. No explanation was given for her bizarre decision to not escape Munich and instead wander around the countryside.
However, the ending of the book does indicate that perhaps the next instalment in this series may return Maisie and her team to some semblance of order!

So much has happened to Maisie since we last met. It’s hard to say much without revealing too much, so I’ll keep this brief.
It’s now 1937 and Maisie is in Gibraltar and very much alone. I feel the story suffers from the absence of favourite characters such as Billy and Frankie. However, as always, Winspear has done her research and I found this location and its proximity to the Spanish Civil War very interesting.
This was not a favourite Maisie Dobbs novel, but I was still happy to keep her company.

Not one of the best in this series. However, the end promises many changes in Maisie’s world.

In Maisie’s 9th instalment, she is asked to investigate the ‘accidental’ death of Eddie Pettit, a simple man ‘whose thoughts weren’t in his head, like with most people’ but held in his heart. His friends, the barrow-sellers of Covent Garden, don’t believe his death was an accident at all; neither does Maisie.
Maisie is in the grips of an existential crisis: how does she want to lead her life? Is she really helping her friends, or merely controlling their lives? As a friend pointed out, ‘Everything good has a dark side, even generosity - and no one likes to think someone else is pulling the strings, do they?’ Does she want her relationship with James to develop further? She is feeling literally and metaphorically suffocated by the constraints of the relationship.
It’s easy to see from the perspective of 2019 that Maisie is suffering PTSD from her experiences in France during the war, but in 1933 it was unheard of, as were ways to treat it. So, she’s struggling to manage the demons by herself.
Looming tall over her personal demons is the shadow of Hitler’s rise to power. There are some in Britain who believe that another war is imminent. Maisie had been to war. ‘But war was more than a place; it was a monster, a thing at once alive and dead and predatory.’
I believe in Maisie Dobbs: she questions her actions and her motives, and takes nothing for granted. She realizes she is blessed, but struggles to accept that she is worthy. She is, in many ways, a very modern woman, living at a time when women are expected not to have a career, or even an opinion.
For fans of this series, Elegy for Eddie further develops the characters we have grown to love, and prepares the scene for the outbreak of war in the next books.

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.

A MAP IS A CONDUIT FOR WONDER, A TOOL FOR ADVENTURE. BUT IT IS ALSO AN INSTRUMENT OF POWER - AND LIKE ALL THINGS, POWER HAS TWO FACES.

It’s 1914, and Michael Clifton is a young cartographer who has recently purchased a plot of land in California. As he prepares to return home to Boston, war is declared in Europe. As a son of an expat Englishman, Michael feels duty bound and sets sail to England to serve in the British army. Three years later, he is declared Missing in Action.

Fast forward to 1932, and Maisie is retained by Michael’s parents after they learn that his remains have been discovered in France, together with a bundle of love-letters from an un-named nurse. They want Maisie to find this nurse, who is a last link to their lost son. Maisie discovers that Michael’s death was not as a result of the war.

Winspear enriches her stories with characters with whom you can relate, and about whom you care. Even the victims (who in many crime novels are merely a plot device) are imbued with nuance. As a reader, you feel connected to Michael, who feels a “sense of wonder that came with a map, for each one told a story, and he, the surveyor and cartographer, was the storyteller, the translator, the guide to places a person might never otherwise see.”

I think Winspear fell a little in love with cartography and all things to do with maps while researching this novel. As Maisie says, the cartographer “must be the storyteller and the editor, seeing the curves and movement of the land with a practiced eye, and then bringing a mathematical precision to the page.” While Maisie is researching she discovers the primary role of a map is in “wayfinding”, rather than ‘finding our way’. ‘Wayfinding’ sounds much more romantic, don’t you think?

As she continues her investigation, Maisie is also extremely concerned by her mentor Maurice’s failing health. Maurice is her strongest ally and she finds it hard to think of life without his guiding wisdom. Even in his weakened state, Maurice helps Maisie see things from a different perspective. Maisie is concerned that everything changes when you unearth the past, and Maurice replies, “That’s not necessarily a bad thing, is it? You bring old events and choices to the surface, and you change the vista - but spring will come, the soil will seed itself, that flood or drought will abate, and life goes on in that new landscape.”

A personal favourite moment in this book is when Maisie goes to The British Library for some help finding a poem. The librarian can’t help her, but instead refers Maisie to “old Mrs Hancock” who comes in almost everyday to read a book of poetry. Sure enough, Mrs Hancock is able to identify the poem and “her smile was that of one well satisfied with herself, and Maisie was glad she had made the inquiry, for the woman seemed to stand straighter, as if in being asked to share her expertise, she had received a validation of worth.” It’s moments like this that make the Maisie Dobbs series so special.

Jacqueline Winspear has outdone herself with Maisie Dobbs’s 7th adventure. It’s a great mystery, with a satisfying conclusion. But what makes the series so outstanding is much more than just clever plotting, it’s the characters who you grow to love and care for, and who you want to continue a relationship with.

Another fabulous Maisie Dobbs mystery. It’s Christmas 1931 and Maisie finds herself seconded to Military Intelligence, Section 5 after letters are received by the Home Secretary, threatening to kill innocent Londoners en masse if demands are not met.

This sixth book in the series has a different tone to the earlier books. Maisie is working as part of a Scotland Yard team, which creates certain challenges: Maisie is really not a team player! Her investigations reveal research being done into chemical weapons and their effects. As in all Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs novels, the story looks at the after-effects of the war, in this case the hundreds of thousands of returned soldiers suffering from shell-shock and what we now know is PTSD. Winspear also explores the lack of understanding from most medical practitioners in regard to the treatment of those suffering from mental health issues.

Maisie’s approach to her work, her friends, family and colleagues is considered and compassionate. She sets us all a fine example!

It would be easy to cynically dismiss Maisie Dobbs as a bit of a Pollyanna; never jumping to conclusions, always giving people the benefit of the doubt and looking at peoples’ actions with empathy and compassion. These attributes are what make Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series such a stand-out. Her stories are not so much ‘who, where and how’; but much more about ‘why’.

Winspear’s descriptions of England after the First World War are full of period detail and I always find myself immersed in the time and place. In this novel, the fifth instalment in the series, Maisie is on a case that takes her to countryside Kent during the harvesting of the hops. Suddenly the Kentish landscape is flooded with itinerate workers from London and Gypsy families, and the locals are not happy. The village has a strange atmosphere, that Maisie finds very disquieting. There are secrets being kept involving a war-time Zeppelin attack on the village, with tragic results. The mystery at the core of An Incomplete Revenge is one of the best so far: complex and nuanced, involving a crime many would judge as unforgivable.

Maisie is a thinker, and it’s these moments of reflection that make this series such an enjoyable read: “[Maisie] wondered about…those often elusive events, conversations, or thoughts that rendered the path clear for forgiveness to take root and grow in a wounded soul.”

“My work does not end when a solution to a given case is found, or the grain of information sought is discovered. It ends only when those affected by my work are at peace with the outcome.”

Maisie Dobbs is not your average detective! She sees the scope of her work to be much more than merely solving a crime. She wishes to bring peace and closure to her clients. She uses some unusual techniques, which border on the mystical. However, if that is not your “cup of tea” don’t let that deter you from reading this entertaining series.

Winspear uses her Maisie Dobbs novels to reveal England between the wars. In Messenger of Truth she uses the divide between the “haves” and “have-nots” to question how a nation looks after its returned servicemen. Questions are raised relating to health care, homelessness and extreme poverty.

The mystery at the heart of Messenger of Truth is not as satisfying as previous books in the series. However, Maisie makes some hard decisions in her private life that make this novel still well worth reading. She realises that her independence is vitally important to her self-worth, and knows that this means making difficult choices.

Jacqueline Winspear uses the following quote from Sophocles as an epigraph:
“Truly, to tell lies is not honourable; but when the truth entails tremendous ruin, to speak dishonourably is pardonable.”
This quote eloquently summarises one of the themes explored in the third Maisie Dobbs mystery novel: when is it right to withhold the truth? Another major theme is PTSD, although in the 1930s it had yet to be properly diagnosed or given a name. This is where Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series is so different, and superior in my view, to many other mystery novels. Yes, there are crimes to solve, and criminals to catch, and mysteries to unravel. However, these are used, to great effect, as a segue to an exploration of philosophical and ethical quandaries.

It is 1930 and Maisie has never been busier. She finds herself investigating three cases, two of which involve young men who were lost during the war. Maisie believes that by keeping busy and focusing on her work she will recover from the horrors of the war that still haunt her. When one of the cases requires her to travel to France, she knows she must return to the site of the field hospital where she was a nurse during the war. As her father said to her, she must do her work, slay her dragons, and then come home.

Pardonable Lies is imbued with a sense of melancholy and loss. The long-term after-effects of war are always close to the surface. And the shadow of further conflict is never far away. As Maurice, Maisie’s teacher and mentor warns, “We may think conflict is over, that we can mourn our dead, build our houses again, take up our tools, fashion our tomorrows, and watch the grass grow over the trenches, but the truth is somewhat more complex.”

The Maisie Dobbs books keep getting better! Pardonable Lies demonstrates Winspear’s ability to balance pace, plot and characters with skill and dexterity. She has a gift in communicating a clear picture of a time and place.

Maisie Dobbs is not your usual private investigator. She sees her role as much broader than that: “…for Maisie, the case notes would not be filed away until those whose lives were touched by her investigation had reached a certain peace with her findings, with themselves, and with one another - as far as that might be possible.”

This is the second instalment in the Maisie Dobbs series, set in post-war London. It is 1930 and Maisie is instructed by Joseph Waite, a wealthy self-made man, to find his missing daughter, who appears to have run away from home (not for the first time). As Charlotte is in her early 30s, there is obviously more to this case than meets the eye!

One of the intriguing elements of this series is the all pervading sense of loss and sadness that is evident in England. It appears that no-one was left untouched by the war. By way of Maisie checking the time on her silver nurse’s watch, Winspear cleverly refers to Maisie’s time as a nurse during the Great War. (I highly recommend reading the first book in this series to understand Maisie’s history.) When Maisie visits Joseph Waite’s International Stores she is moved by the mosaic list of employees lost in the Great War - at least one hundred. “A shared grief often seemed to linger in the air, perhaps borne on a soft breeze carrying the name of one who was lost heard in conversation or remembered at a gathering, and the realisation that one or two of that group were gone, their laughter never to be heard again. It was as if the sorrow of every single man and woman who had lived with the fear or reality of losing a loved one to war had formed an abyss to be negotiated anew every day.”

The Maisie Dobbs series brings to mind The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. Similar to Alexander McCall Smith’s series, Maisie Dobbs is less about the mystery/crime and more about the characters and what lies below the surface. Maisie learnt her craft from Dr Maurice Blanche whose methods are anything but orthodox: “Maisie’s work with Maurice Blanche had taught her that a person speaks not only with the voice but with those objects she chooses to surround herself.” Maisie practices meditation and finds answers in quite contemplation. She was taught by Blanche “that coincidence is a messenger sent by truth.” It is through this open mindedness that Maisie is able to help her assistant, Billy Beale, find relief for his war-time injuries through revolutionary exercises and movements devised by a man named Joseph Pilates!

Maisie’s personal mantra is: “May I not sit in judgment. May my decisions be for the good of all concerned. May my work bring peace.” I think this is a mantra well worth embracing.

We meet Maisie Dobbs in the Spring of 1929, as she embarks on her solo career as a private investigator. Very early on we can see that there is more to Maisie Dobbs than meets the eye. She appears to be from “old money” and yet has a familiar way with her that defies that assumption. Very early in this book I was impressed with Winspear’s clever turns of phrase. The first example I tagged was: “Maisie sighed deeply and rubbed her neck at the place where worry always sat when it was making itself at home.” When I read that, I realised that I was in the hands of someone who knows how to write!

Maisie’s first case is a gentleman who suspects his wife is having an affair. She disappears for the day, and is lying about her whereabouts. Maisie follows her and discovers that she is visiting a grave that says “Vincent. Just Vincent. No other name, no date of birth.” Fortunately, Maisie has a lovely chat with the groundsman, who fills her in on why a young man who survived the battlefields of the First World War chose to be buried with only his first name. Winspear uses this reference to the war to segue to Maisie’s background story, her first love and her experience as a nurse in France during the war. This takes up a good third of the book, and I really found it fascinating. However, I felt it broke the continuity of the original mystery. By the time we return to 1929, I couldn’t remember what she was investigating, and had to keep flicking back to the early chapters.

Winspear has created many support characters who are equally as plucky as our heroine. I particularly liked Priscilla, who Maisie meets when studying at Cambridge. Priscilla embraces life and likes a party, and encourages Maisie to do the same. As Priscilla says: “we are all a long time dead when we go. This is the only ride on the merry-go-round.”

This first Maisie Dobbs novel touches on many aspects relating to England as it recovers from the First World War, and particularly the young men who return with hideous physical scars and the less apparent, but it some ways, more damaging, emotional scars. Maisie’s assistant, Billy Beale, walks with a pronounced limp due to a terrible injury during the war. He appears to be a very positive character, and then he tells Maisie of his sleepless nights. “Then I go out. Walking, the streets. For hours sometimes. And you know what, Miss? It’s not only me. There’s a lot of men I see, ‘bout my age, walking the streets. And we all know, Miss, we all know who we are. Old soldiers what keep seeing the battle. Miss, I tell you, sometimes I think we’re like the waking dead.” I found this image of all those lost souls wandering the streets of London, extremely moving.

I loved Maisie Dobbs. I loved her pluck and kindness. I loved the period of history; in a London in recovery mode, where there is opportunity for change and growth. I loved Maisie’s friends and colleagues and especially her dad. Some readers may find her a bit too “perfect in every way”, but in the world we are living in today, where cynicism and greed seem to rule, I found Maisie a breath of fresh air.