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49th out of 788 books
—
1,641 voters
Pardonable Lies (Maisie Dobbs #3)
by
Jacqueline Winspear (Goodreads Author)
A new Maisie Dobbs novel from award-winning author Jacqueline Winspear
In the third novel of this unique and masterly crime series, a deathbed plea from his wife leads Sir Cecil Lawton, KC, to seek the aid of Maisie Dobbs, psychologist and investigator. As Maisie soon learns, Agnes Lawton never accepted that her aviator son was killed in the Great War, a torment that led he...more
In the third novel of this unique and masterly crime series, a deathbed plea from his wife leads Sir Cecil Lawton, KC, to seek the aid of Maisie Dobbs, psychologist and investigator. As Maisie soon learns, Agnes Lawton never accepted that her aviator son was killed in the Great War, a torment that led he...more
Paperback, 384 pages
Published
June 27th 2006
by Picador
(first published August 10th 2005)
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Aug 08, 2012
Barbara
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommended to Barbara by:
Sue Drees
Shelves:
historical-fiction,
mystery
I have long intended to read this series, because it was recommended by a respected GR Friend.I was going to start with #1; but this book jumped out at me from the shelf in the library. How could I deny it a chance? (I hope that I don't regret starting at #3!)
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As I had feared, I think I should not have started with Book 3 of this series. I cannot say much about this novel because it did not move me. As most of my friends know, I do enjoy mysteries, but...more
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As I had feared, I think I should not have started with Book 3 of this series. I cannot say much about this novel because it did not move me. As most of my friends know, I do enjoy mysteries, but...more
#3 in the Maisie Dobbs mystery series, and this outing finds Maisie returning to Post-WWI France in a 2-fold mission to determine for a client that his son is, in fact, truely dead, and to help her friend to find out more about her brother's wartime activities.
While I liked this offering, I felt it was the weakest in the series so far. Maisie is beginning to grate. She's very unlikable IMO and has these strange new-agey powers that just don't mesh with the 1930's background. That being said, I s...more
While I liked this offering, I felt it was the weakest in the series so far. Maisie is beginning to grate. She's very unlikable IMO and has these strange new-agey powers that just don't mesh with the 1930's background. That being said, I s...more
It was nice to go back and actually experience for myself some of the events and relationships that are mentioned further on in the series. I enjoyed getting to see her relationship with the doctor develop and then fall apart, though I could have handled a little bit less angst about it. And now that I'm thinking along those lines, it dawns on me that when it comes to men, either in this book or further along in the series, Maisie Dobbs does not seem to have it all figured out. A lot of her self...more
1 like · like · see review
Jan 08, 2013
Jennifer
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
fans of Maisie Dobbs
Recommended to Jennifer by:
a lot of my Goodread's friends
In a weird way, Maisie Dobbs and Walt Longmire, are linked in my head because I started these series about the same time. Though London between the wars and rural Wyoming in the near present day are worlds apart, these two series have a lot in common. They both create a cast of characters that are almost as interesting (but not quite) as their heros, they both have a strong sense of place, and both while focusing around a mystery or set of mysteries are more about the ride than the destination....more
Third in the Maisie Dobbs historical mystery series revolving around Maisie, a detective using meditation and psychology to solve her cases. This story takes place over the summer of 1930 in England and France.
My Take
Another pip from Winspear. It's hard to believe that Winspear is a contemporary author writing today as she really brings this period to life. She really knows how to dig in and write so that I felt as though I was there in 1930 England. The evolution of the telephone. The manners,...more
My Take
Another pip from Winspear. It's hard to believe that Winspear is a contemporary author writing today as she really brings this period to life. She really knows how to dig in and write so that I felt as though I was there in 1930 England. The evolution of the telephone. The manners,...more
I've now read seven of Winspear's Maisie Dobbs novels and, although I enjoyed all of them, this was one of the most satisfying.
Set in post WW1 Britain, Maisie was a battlefront nurse, injured during the war. The series takes us through her maturation and professional development as a psychologist and investigator. The strength of the series is the author's gift for recreating time and place. It doesn't take much imagination to stroll through post-war London and feel the pain of the families and...more
Set in post WW1 Britain, Maisie was a battlefront nurse, injured during the war. The series takes us through her maturation and professional development as a psychologist and investigator. The strength of the series is the author's gift for recreating time and place. It doesn't take much imagination to stroll through post-war London and feel the pain of the families and...more
Added 5/11/11
This was a good cozy mystery. There were parts that dragged a bit, but, all in all, the story was a good one. I find that some of author Winspear's sentences are too wordy. For example: "Tavistock opened the gate into a no-man's-land dividing two houses, and then to the back where, between the two gardens, a Cross of Sacrifice rose toward the dark clouds, ever watchful over a small walled cemetery." Winspear also gives a good deal of attention to the clothes which the characters are...more
This was a good cozy mystery. There were parts that dragged a bit, but, all in all, the story was a good one. I find that some of author Winspear's sentences are too wordy. For example: "Tavistock opened the gate into a no-man's-land dividing two houses, and then to the back where, between the two gardens, a Cross of Sacrifice rose toward the dark clouds, ever watchful over a small walled cemetery." Winspear also gives a good deal of attention to the clothes which the characters are...more
http://iwriteinbooks.wordpress.com/20...
The emotional and physical fallout from World War One had hardly the concrete closure it can hold, today.
The absence of technological identification, digital records or micro chips made it a bit open ended in the days after the conflict ended. Because of the confusion, so many families of all backgrounds, were left wondering if their loved ones could still be alive and well after the dust cleared.
Cecil Lawson’s wife went to her death-bed, begging of her h...more
The emotional and physical fallout from World War One had hardly the concrete closure it can hold, today.
The absence of technological identification, digital records or micro chips made it a bit open ended in the days after the conflict ended. Because of the confusion, so many families of all backgrounds, were left wondering if their loved ones could still be alive and well after the dust cleared.
Cecil Lawson’s wife went to her death-bed, begging of her h...more
The third Maisie Dobbs novel, Pardonable Lies, is a bigger book, and delves more deeply into Maisie's past and her personal life. When a man asks Psychologist/Private Investigator Maisie Dobbs to help him fulfill a deathbed promise to his wife to find out if their son, who was declared killed during World War I was really dead, Maisie takes the case.
Coincidentally, Maisie's friend Priscilla has come for a visit and asks Maisie to find out the circumstances behind her brother Peter's wartime deat...more
Coincidentally, Maisie's friend Priscilla has come for a visit and asks Maisie to find out the circumstances behind her brother Peter's wartime deat...more
Maisie Dobbs, female sleuth and former battlefield nurse, tackles three major cases in Pardonable Lies. Maisie is brought in by inspector Stratton of Scotland Yard to interview a young girl suspected of murder. Although evidence puts her at the scene of the crime Maisie believes in the girl's innocence. Sensitive to the loss of her own mother at a young age Maisie strives to find the truth before young Avril Jarvis is separated from her mother permanently with a life prison sentence. Upon arrivi...more
As a teacher, it’s interesting and delightful to see a writer’s craft develop. I believe I am witnessing that development of art and skill in Jacqueline Winspear. With each book in the Maisie Dobbs series, she is just better. The plots have seemed to have more “pizzazz” and the characters just get rounder and rounder. I really liked that this book was in three sections, with the first section set in England, the second in France, and the last back in England. As in the previous books, the linger...more
Okay, I like this well-enough to keep on reading the series. Maisie has several mysteries this time around so that she doesn't have to chance to have her post-solution counselling. One mystery she is hardly involved in at all, two are WWI questions to be answered in France and the final one, I suspect, was added on the request of an editor to create more tension and peril for Maisie. The first got rather short shrift, the two WWI mysteries were essentially solved by coincidence as much as anythi...more
The Maisie Dobbs books definitely have a mood about them, and this third one in the series continues it. The mood comes from the impact of The Great War, World War I, upon the people of England - and more so in this one, France. One element that runs through the stories is the sense of witnessing and experiencing the impact upon the young people drawn into the fighting, and the effect upon ordinary lives. It feels a little melancholy, yet it was not depressing to me because the characters move o...more
These Maisie Dobbs books just keep getting better! In Pardonable Lies, the third installment of Maisie's adventures, our intrepid investigator is called upon by Sir Cecil Lawton, a friend of her benefactor, to prove once and for all that his son Ralph died in World War I. Ralph's mother, Agnes, never believed her son was really gone. Now that she has passed on, Ralph's father, Sir Cecil Lawton, has promised to find out one way or the other what really happened to his son. But there's a problem -...more
While the writing was par for Winspear I heartily disliked the content of the story-line. Just fed up hearing about it in EVERY venue of Life! Live your life any way you want, it's called Free Agency and we ALL have it. Even me! That's why I'm allowed to say I don't agree! And as long as you are not standing up and telling me I have to say it's okay for you to make those choices I won't stand up and tell you those choices are wrong and will only bring you and yours unhappiness. I am DONE validat...more
1 like · like · see review
Probably 3.5 stars. I'm of two minds about this series. I love the time period, the historical detail, the setting, the mysteries, and the idea of a self-possessed, intelligent woman finding a way for herself. But there's always something depressing about these books, too. Certainly there's an elegiac tone, but it's almost as if Winspear has decided no one can ever be happy again in the wake of the war. I'm sure that's true for some, but all the joy just seems sucked out of this world. Just once...more
1 like · like · see review
If I could, I'd give this a 4 3/4. It was a solid 5 right up until the final "mystery" was solved. It wasn't terrible, it made sense in the context of the story, but it was superfluous. Yes, the mystery genre has certain conventions and putting the detective/protagonist in danger is one of them, but the other storylines are so rich in history, character development and insight that she would have been forgiven for flouting that convention (at least by me).
Back to that solid five. The weaving tog...more
Back to that solid five. The weaving tog...more
As I was reading, I was thinking this might be my first 5 star rating in a while. The characters were intriguing, the plot drew me in, the details on life in the 1930s were fascinating. The writing was wonderful (and I normally don't notice the writing). The plot lines wrapped up one by one. Just one left dangling...
Then the book almost dropped to 3 stars, I was so angry about how that story line resolved. OK, I suspect if I went back to the beginning, the details needed to make the conclusion r...more
Then the book almost dropped to 3 stars, I was so angry about how that story line resolved. OK, I suspect if I went back to the beginning, the details needed to make the conclusion r...more
This is the third in the series and they get better as they go. While I found the first too heavy on backstory,this one moves along At the end of the audio-book, there was a ten minute interview with the author who said she had always done non-fiction.
She was stuck in a traffic jam in London when Maisie walked up out of the underground and appeared to Winspear almost fully realized. There were scenes that came to her while she was writing the first book, that she knew belong in the second or th...more
She was stuck in a traffic jam in London when Maisie walked up out of the underground and appeared to Winspear almost fully realized. There were scenes that came to her while she was writing the first book, that she knew belong in the second or th...more
3 likes · like · see review
I do enjoy this series, set in post WW I England. In this, the 3rd book, there is growth in Maisie Dobb’s character as she begins to wean herself from her teacher and mentor Maurice Blanche. Though intuition and psychology play a strong role in Maisie’s success as an investigator in the first two books, this one also delves into the supernatural with dream and psychic revelations. The after effects of the First World War again have a strong effect on the characters actions and there are some hi...more
Maisie Dobbs is back, and her private investigation business is growing despite the difficult economy. She's also starting to spread her wings a bit, to operate a bit more independently of her mentor, Maurice Blanche.
Then Lord Julian Compton, whose family helped her get an education and start her business, asks her to take on a case for a friend. His son was a pilot killed in the First World War, but his body was not returned and his wife never believed in their son's death. On her deathbed, she...more
Then Lord Julian Compton, whose family helped her get an education and start her business, asks her to take on a case for a friend. His son was a pilot killed in the First World War, but his body was not returned and his wife never believed in their son's death. On her deathbed, she...more
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Sep 05, 2010
Stven
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommended to Stven by:
Bookmarks magazine
Maisie Dobbs, who was a nurse during the Great War (that's World War I for us 21st centurians), returns to France to learn the fates of two British aviators. She bills herself as a "Psychologist and Investigator," and in her England of the 1930s the "Psychologist" bit must come across as terribly modern. In the opening scene of Pardonable Lies the psychology part actually seems persuasive; in the rest of the book, my first encounter with Miss Dobbs, it seems more of an occasional heavyhanded int...more
Jacqueline Winspear has created a treasure in this Maisie Dobbs series. Not only are the plots good, but the characters are three-dimensional and Maisie is a person you would like to have as a friend.
The cast of characters around her are the same.
In this one Maisie is hired to discover whether or not two soldiers of World War I are alive or dead and, if killed, find their final resting places. As she investigates these cases, she finds it's not as easy as she expected it to be. There are thre...more
The cast of characters around her are the same.
In this one Maisie is hired to discover whether or not two soldiers of World War I are alive or dead and, if killed, find their final resting places. As she investigates these cases, she finds it's not as easy as she expected it to be. There are thre...more
I liked this book. I didn't like it as well as the first. Winspear creates an interesting view of an investigator who is the opposite of hard-boiled. Her facing her demons, something that most authors won't do in detective books, is an interesting wrinkle. Maisy is always moral, always conflicted. Sometimes, when you're reading books in a row, not the way the author ever intended, this intent morality is tiring. In this novel, she faces the duplicity of her mentor, a man who has made her what sh...more
In the third novel of this unique and masterly crime series, a deathbed plea from his wife leads Sir Cecil Lawton, KC, to seek the aid of Maisie Dobbs, psychologist and investigator. As Maisie soon learns, Agnes Lawton never accepted that her aviator son was killed in the Great War, a torment that led her not only to the edge of madness but also to the doors of those who practice the dark arts and commune with the spirit world. Determined to prove Ralph Lawton either dead or alive, Maisie is plu...more
I just love this series. There are some things that are predictable, yet other twists and turns.
I love the characters, the time period, the setting. Just can't get enough of this series! :)
For spoilers, please scroll:
I knew that the girl, Pacale would be the niece of Pricilla, and I knew that Ralph was gay. I loved hearing more of the story behind it. I also knew when Maisie was taken that it would be Maurice at the other end, I don't know why I knew that, but I did. I also knew that the politic...more
I love the characters, the time period, the setting. Just can't get enough of this series! :)
For spoilers, please scroll:
I knew that the girl, Pacale would be the niece of Pricilla, and I knew that Ralph was gay. I loved hearing more of the story behind it. I also knew when Maisie was taken that it would be Maurice at the other end, I don't know why I knew that, but I did. I also knew that the politic...more
I like this series better with each subsequent book, this being the third in the series. Maisie Dobbs served as a nurse in WWI, and is now living in England following the war. Having become both an investigator and a psychologist, Maisie combines her skills from both fields; being keenly aware of human behaviors, she is aware of every nuance as she interviews those involved in her investigations, and also observes and adjusts her own body language to obtain desired information or emotion from th...more
i'm beginning to like maisie's character less. she's one stubborn mule. for someone who makes a living by being totally in touch with human emotion and understanding all the meanings that lie beneath everyday behaviors, she's as cold as ice. this is especially disturbing since there are two major upsets that happen for maisie in this book.
she has a breakdown when she revisits the site of the casualty clearing station in france. maurice prescribes lots of bedrest. maisie already wants to get goin...more
she has a breakdown when she revisits the site of the casualty clearing station in france. maurice prescribes lots of bedrest. maisie already wants to get goin...more
This entry in the Maisie Dobbs series covers a lot of ground, including three cases and delving into Maisie's background at several pivotal points in her life.
One case is about a downed aviator--was he killed in a crash, or alive as his mother believed he was? Another case is about a young girl believed to have killed a so-called uncle, who may have been trying to become her pimp. The third case involves the search for the burying place of her friend Priscilla's oldest brother, killed in WWI.
Th...more
One case is about a downed aviator--was he killed in a crash, or alive as his mother believed he was? Another case is about a young girl believed to have killed a so-called uncle, who may have been trying to become her pimp. The third case involves the search for the burying place of her friend Priscilla's oldest brother, killed in WWI.
Th...more
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Jacqueline Winspear was born and raised in the county of Kent, England. Following higher education at the University of London’s Institute of Education, Jacqueline worked in academic publishing, in higher education and in marketing communications in the UK.
She emigrated to the United States in 1990, and while working in business and as a personal / professional coach, Jacqueline embarked upon a li...more
More about Jacqueline Winspear...
She emigrated to the United States in 1990, and while working in business and as a personal / professional coach, Jacqueline embarked upon a li...more
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“My child, when a mountain appears on the journey, we try to go to the left, then to the right. We try to find the easy way to navigate our way back to the easier path.…. But the mountain is there to be crossed. It is on that pilgrimage, as we climb higher, that we are forced to shed the layers upon layers we have carried for so long. Then we find that our load is lighter, and we have come to know something of ourselves in the perilous climb…..Do not seek to avoid the mountain, my child. For it has been placed there at a perfect time. It will only become larger if you seek to delay or draw back from the ascent. ”
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Jun 16, 2013 01:18pm