Atmospheric setting and excellent characters

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	• Maisie Dobbs Jacqueline Winspear Penguin Books, 2004 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 89 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Superb literature

Maisie Dobbs is just plain superb literature. The murder mystery is almost a secondary element in what is really a very introspective and sensitive portrayal of the effects and aftereffects of war on individuals. Even the murderer is treated compassionately by the author. Jacqueline Winspear.

The characters are very carefully crafted personalities; even those who are actually first encountered as names on graves, are vested with a history that matters to the reader and to the other characters. The various interactions among these people is engaging and carries the reader from mere spectator to thoroughly invested in the outcomes of these people's lives.

The time frame chosen by the author for the action is a very eventful one. English society is on the cusp of change, and nearly everyone senses it in some way. Some are confused about what these changes mean for their futures, while others are eager to plunge forward to a "better world." The old society, the aristocratic and privileged age of the 19th Century, is poised for transition to what the reader knows is a technologically advanced, sometimes very violent, but also a more egalitarian world.

The narrative is very tightly crafted. Although there are abrupt transitions between present and past, hardly an episode is included anywhere that does not forward the reader's understanding of the meaning of the tale, and the author leaves no lose ends.

As the story emerges, both the personal histories of the characters and the murder mystery, it will not leave the reader untouched.

Excellent.

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Loved this book

What an interesting, intricate character is Maisie Dobbs! I read the second book of this series first, then went back to read this one. The flashback, revealing Maisie as a poor but brilliant girl, being granted (in a somewhat fairy-godmother style) education and opportunity, and then seeing what she does with it, is a charming backstory that makes Maisie so endearing! The period tension of England during WWI and before WWII is very well done. The element of the science of Psychology, in its infancy, being applied to detective work adds yet another layer to this series.

Loved it! Read all the books! I'm waiting for more!

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Where's the mystery?

Its 1929, and Maisie Dobbs, thirty-something, opens her own detective agency. One of her first cases seems like an open-and shut case of infidelity, but after following the man's wife to a cemetery, Maisie isn't so sure.

Maisie, a former scullery maid, Cambridge graduate (though without the degree), and a nurse in France during the Great War, finds herself reliving old memories (not all of them good), as she pursues the case to The Retreat, a home for wounded and shell-shocked former soldiers. Immediately, Maisie has her suspicions about the place, and she sends in her friend, Billy Beale, to investigate.

The flashback scenes seem like something out of Upstairs, Downstairs, right down to the description of Ebury Place (Eaton Place in the BBC TV show). Even some of the characters are dead ringers for their TV counterparts. As far as the mystery is concerned, there's really very little "mystery" to speak of--it's pretty clear what's going on from the beginning. The resolution of the case is pretty flimsy, and the bad guy crumbles under no pressure from Maisie. Also, Winspear makes a mistake in making the whole middle of the book one giant flashback. She would have been better off putting in bits and pieces of flashback here and there instead of all at once.

But I really did like the setting, of England between the wars. Some of the characters are delightful, especially Maisie's friends (in fact, they threaten to steal the show at times). Hopefully, Winspear's detective will continue to grow in the other books in the series, and will encounter actual crimes.

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Atmospheric setting and excellent characters

London, 1929.

Maisie Dobbs begins her life as a servant but is fortunate enough, through the support of her employer Lady Rowan, to receive a good education. Having studied psychology under Dr. Maurice Blanche (a friend of lady Rowans who works with Scotland Yard) she sets up a business as a private detective. Her first case seems relatively straightforward, and she uses her intuition and her excellent interpersonal skills to solve the mystery and help the people involved to understand their situation. During the investigation, however, she stumbles onto something far more sinister and dangerous and this is where the real mystery begins.

As the story progresses we discover that Maisie Dobbs has seen the horrors of war first-hand. Her investigations lead her to a retreat for injured soldiers and we see her empathy for those who have been damaged by the Great War and eventually, the extent of her personal tragedy.

I really enjoyed the atmosphere of London in the post war era, and the plot moves along at a comfortable pace, interspersing Maisies investigation with flashbacks from her life. Jaqueline Winspear captures her characters - both major and minor- beautifully, especially Maisie who is a complex individual. She is courageous and sensitive, but not without flaws and by the end of the book I had run the gamut of emotions from frustration and annoyance to admiration and compassion for Maisie Dobbs.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Hailed by NPR?s Fresh Air as part Testament of Youth, part Dorothy Sayers, and part Upstairs, Downstairs, this astonishing debut has already won fans from coast to coast and is poised to add Maisie Dobbs to the ranks of literature?s favorite sleuths.

Maisie Dobbs isn?t just any young housemaid. Through her own natural intelligence?and the patronage of her benevolent employers?she works her way into college at Cambridge. When World War I breaks out, Maisie goes to the front as a nurse. It is there that she learns that coincidences are meaningful and the truth elusive. After the War, Maisie sets up on her own as a private investigator. But her very first assignment, seemingly an ordinary infidelity case, soon reveals a much deeper, darker web of secrets, which will force Maisie to revisit the horrors of the Great War and the love she left behind.

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