Marilyn's Mystery Reads

If you would like to read a mystery series that goes beyond entertainment, one that takes you into one hundred plus years of English history, brings you to the battlefields of The Great War and the Second World World, and into the lives of both the British aristocracy and their servants, the Maisie Dobbs series is the one you’re looking for.

When readers first met Maisie, she was a thirteen-year-old housemaid in the home of Lord Julian Compton and his family.  She was discovered by Lady Rowan surreptitiously reading in the family’s library, her intelligence was noted, and her life changed.  The series continues from there, chronicling her life over a period of more than fifty years as well as those of the society in which she lives and works.

Now, in the eighteenth and last entry in the series, it’s 1945.  World War II is over, but the devastation it wreaked may be seen everywhere.  The Nazis’ heavy bombing of England left thousands dead or injured, and entire neighborhoods have buildings that are either entirely demolished or in such disrepair as to be almost uninhabitable.  Because of the desperate housing situation, abandoned homes are being taken over by squatters; they are living without heat or electricity.

When Maisie stops by the Belgravia mansion belonging to the Comptons to check on its condition, a young girl talks to her through the mail slot.  The girl, who gives her name as Mary, tells Maisie that there were four of them but now a fifth person is living there, a man who is very, very ill.  “Every day I wonder if he’ll be dead when we go in there,” the girl continues, and it’s obvious that she’s frightened, not because she fears for herself or her friends but because she doesn’t know what they’ll do if the stranger dies.

Maisie thinks she knows who the man is.  When she arrives at the Comptons’ home the next day with bags of food, Mary reluctantly allows her in and then takes her upstairs to see the mysterious man.  When Maisie sees him, she knows her suspicion was correct–he’s Will Beale, the son of her partner Billy, and he’s just returned from the war.  He had been in the mansion many times as a child and now has returned to it as a kind of sanctuary, reluctant to face his parents and let them see the state he’s in.

Using her skills as an investigator and a psychologist, Maisie is determined to deal with both Will’s situation and that of the four adolescents.  She realizes she cannot to it alone, so she calls on her best friend Lady Priscilla Partridge, who is feeling at loose ends now that her three sons are adults.  She is more than willing to help Maisie, as is Maisie’s husband Mark, an American with contacts that neither woman has.  Together, along with several others, they are able to help the children and Will and to solve a decades-old mystery in the Compton family.

An award-winning novelist, the author has used her own background as the granddaughter of a World War I veteran who returned to England severely wounded and shell-shocked to show the far-reaching effects on whose who served and those who loved them.  You can read more about Jacqueline Winspear at this site.

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