Maisie Dobbs (Maisie Dobbs Mysteries)

published	July 2003 by Soho Press
binding	Hardcover
isbn	1569473307 (isbn13: 9781569473306)
ebook
pages	294
description	What do Hercule Poirot and Charlotte Gray have in common? It may be the wonderful Maisie Dobbs Lady Rowan Compton first met Maisie whe...more [close] What do Hercule Poirot and Charlotte Gray have in common? It may be the wonderful Maisie Dobbs Lady Rowan Compton first met Maisie when, at thirteen, she went into service as a maid at her ladyship’s Belgravia mansion. A suffragette, Lady Rowan took the remarkably smart youngster under her wing and became her patron. She encouraged Maisie to study at Cambridge, and was aided in this by Maurice Blanche, a friend often retained as an investigator by the elite of Europe when discretion and results were required. It was he who first recognized Maisie’s intuitive gifts. The outbreak of war changed everything. Maisie left for France to train as a nurse, then served at the front, where she fell in love with a handsome young doctor. After the Armistice, in the spring of 1929, Maisie hangs out her shingle: M. Dobbs, Trade and Personal Investigations. Her very first case involves suspected infidelity but turns up something else, a tombstone with only a first name—Vincent. And then she finds another. The deceased had lived on a cooperative farm called The Retreat, a well-regarded convalescent refuge for those grievously wounded in the war, ex-soldiers too shattered to resume normal life. When Lady Rowan’s son makes plans to join the reclusive community, Maisie hurriedly investigates and finds a disturbing mystery at its core whose resolution gives her the courage to confront the ghost that has haunted her for ten years. [close]
date added	05-14-07 edit book

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Bonnie Gayle rated it:

02/19/08

bookshelves: historical-fiction, library-books, mysteries-thrillers, reviewed

Read in February, 2008

This book took FOREVER to read, which is never a good sign. I read several excellent reviews, but I wasn't quite as thrilled with it as I was expecting to be.

I won't really do much of a synopsis, because the book takes quite a long time to get up to speed, and I don't want to give away anything that takes place more than 100 pages into the book.

Briefly: Maisie Dobbs is a private investigator in England just after World War I. The case in the book deals with soldiers who have been gravel...more This book took FOREVER to read, which is never a good sign. I read several excellent reviews, but I wasn't quite as thrilled with it as I was expecting to be.

I won't really do much of a synopsis, because the book takes quite a long time to get up to speed, and I don't want to give away anything that takes place more than 100 pages into the book.

Briefly: Maisie Dobbs is a private investigator in England just after World War I. The case in the book deals with soldiers who have been gravely wounded in the war, particularly on the face, where it cannot be hidden. A gravely injured man has gone to a place called The Retreat, but he left in a casket. Just as Maisie is starting to suspect foul play, she learns that her benefactor's son is planning on going to The Retreat as well. The case leads Maisie to discover that the wounds received during war don't heal as quickly as is believed, and that she has her own wounds left over, from being a nurse in the war, that the case brings to the surface. Perhaps it is time to face them.

The book has an odd format. Just when you start getting into the mystery, and it starts going at a good pace, the book goes back, and details 20 years of Maisie's life as she was growing up. This takes up a substantial chunk of the book, and when it gets back to the mystery, it's hard to get interested in it again. In addition to that, Maisie fashions herself as a detective/psychologist, and says that she heals the soul as well, but her methods are a little cliched and calculated, for example tilting her head to the side when she wants someone to talk more, or not talking after someone has said something powerful, to not minimize it. She has about 3 methods that she uses over and over. It makes it hard to like her, and instead I found her calculating and smug. Also, the "moral" of the mystery is overkilled by at least 5 people saying it throughout the book: "people only want to see the heroes after a war, not the walking wounded." True, but the point could have been made a little more subtly!

Overall, the book has a good sense of time, place, and you can almost hear the accents through the way that they are written, but Maisie's detective style, and the format of the book are gratingly distracting....less

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Ron rated it:

08/21/08

Read in March, 2007

Maisie Dobbs is a product of a working class family in London who while in service as a young woman (maid to an aristocratic family) is "discovered" going to the library early in the morning before her work began in order to read works of psychology and philosophy. Aware that their young maid has the potential to be so much more, Lady Rowan arranges for Maisie to be tutored, and she qualifies to go to Girton College, Cambridge.

While at Cambridge, she makes a lifelong friend in Pat...more Maisie Dobbs is a product of a working class family in London who while in service as a young woman (maid to an aristocratic family) is "discovered" going to the library early in the morning before her work began in order to read works of psychology and philosophy. Aware that their young maid has the potential to be so much more, Lady Rowan arranges for Maisie to be tutored, and she qualifies to go to Girton College, Cambridge.

While at Cambridge, she makes a lifelong friend in Patricia Evernden, and falls in love with a young doctor. She spends a year at Cambridge and then the desire to contribute to the war effort results in her service as a nurse near the front lines in World War I. After three years of harrowing experience, she is badly wounded by a German artillery shell but gradually recovers physically, while Simon, the doctor she loves, nevers comes out of the coma into which his own wounds send him.

In 1929, after fully recovering from her wounds and pursuing specialized education in psychology, she enters into practice as a private investigator. As such, and as a woman, she stands between the past and a rapidly chaging present in England between the two world wars. Her natural abilities and her education make her a good judge of human nature, and her background of higher education and association with the upper class, combined with her working class origins and experience as a maid allow her to move fairly comfortably between the various social strata in England.

A strong sense of the era, a unique character (not too many women ran their own businesses in early 20th Century Britain, drove their own sporty cars, and maintained themsleves alone in their own flats), and compelling cases make for a s tory that continues to unfold (this is the first of 5 so-far published Maisie Dobbs novels, with more on the way).

While there is a case she pursues in getting her agency off the ground, it is somewhat secondary to the process of establsihing the background and history of Maisie and her working-class assistant, Billy Beale, who she and Simon nursed through a bad wound in Frence during the war. e ...less

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Maisie Dobbs (Maisie Dobbs Mysteries)

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