Winspear, Jacqueline: Maisie Dobbs

From book cover:

She started as a maid in an aristocratic London household when she was thirteen. Her employer, Lady Rowan Compton, a suffragette, took the remarkably bright youngster under her wing and became her patron, aided by Maurice Blanche, a friend often retained as an investigator by the elite of Europe. It was he who first recognized Maisie's intuitive gifts and helped her to earn admission to prestigious Girton College at Cambridge where Maisie planned to complete her education.

The outbreak of war changed everything. Maisie trained as a nurse, then left for France to serve at the Front, where she found---and lost---an important part of herself.

Ten years after the Armistice, in the spring of 1929, Maisie sets up on her own as a private investigator, one who has learned that coincidences are meaningful, and truth elusive. Her very first case involves suspected infidelity but reveals something very different. In the aftermath of the Great War, a former officer has founded a convalescent refuge for those grievously wounded, ex-soldiers too shattered to resume normal life. It is a working farm known as The Retreat. When fate brings Maisie a second case involving The Retreat she must confront the ghost that has haunted her for ten years.

I was charmed and very moved by this book. The empathy and insight of the title character, Maisie Dobbs, is a delight to read. She sounds like a person everyone should be blessed to have in their life. And to read her backstory, it is touching and heartbreaking. And she uses her insight to aid her client(s).

Her first client is a gentleman who suspects his wife of infidelity. Maisie makes sure that she finds out what he intends to do with the information, and how he would react if it were proven true. She is an ethical person, who wants to make sure that nothing untoward and "evil" will come of her investigation. The story then spins into another case. The whole book is truly a joy to read and I cannot recommend it enough!

McPherson, Catriona: After The Armistice Ball

I was having a hard time with this book, but I think it was primarily cause I was having a hard time reading and comprehending at this time. (Sinus/allergy headache and fibrofog, not a good combination)

Here is the cover synopsis:

This gripping murder-mystery is set amid the struggling upper classes of Perthshire as their comfortable world begins to crumble in teh aftermath of the First World War.

Dandy Gilver, her husband back from the Front, her chidren away at school and her uniform growing musty in the attic, is bored to tears in the spring of 1922 and a little light sleuthing seems like harmless fun. She decides to track down the Duffy diamonds, stolen from teh Esslemonts' country house, Croys, after the Armistice Ball. Before long though, the puzzle of the missing gems is swept aside by the sudden, shocking death of lovely young Cara Duffy in a lonely seasid cottage in Galloway. Society and the law are keen to call it an accident but Dandy, along with Cara Duffy's fiance Alec, is sure that there is more to it than meets the eye.

Something is being hidden by the Duffy family: the watchful Lena, the cold and distant Clemence and old Gregory Duffy with his air of sadness--not to mention the victim herself, beautiful Cara, whose secret always seems just tantalizingly out of reach. Dandy must learn to trust her instincts and swallow most of her scruples if she is to uncover the truth.

A sparkling and skillful first novel in the true spirit of the golden age whodunit.

By the end of the book, I was really getting into it. Dandy finally seemed like a real person. But please bear in mind that I was struggling to read this due to aforementioned aflictions, LOL. It took a L-O-N-G time to read thru things in this book. But I am looking forward to future books. McPherson seems to come into her own by the end of the book and makes one want more. (and when you get to the end of the book, you'll really understand that statement.) This is a "thinking" book, not a breeze thru it book. Your thinking hat must be firmly in place, even if you figure out who did it, you'll need it to follow thru to why, just the same as Dandy. You are truly put in her shoes, and her befuddlement, trying to figure out all the details.

dandygilver.co.uk

Greenwood, Kerry: Away with the Fairies

Okay, finished Kerry Greenwood's Away with the Fairies. It was very good, but I still think Phryne is a snob. But she is a likable snob. I look forward to reading more of her books.

Here is the cover synopsis:

It's the 1920's in Melbourne and Phryne is asked to investigate the puzzling death of a famous author and illustrator of fairy stories. To do so, Phryne takes a job with the women's magazine that employed the victim and finds herself enmeshed in her colleagues' deceptions.

But while Phryne is learning the ins and outs of magazine publishing first hand, her personal life is thrown into chaos. Impatient for her lover Lin Chung's imminent return from a silk-buying expedition to China, she instead receives an unusual summons from Lin Chung's family followed by a s series of mysterious assaults and warnings.



This is the 14th book of the series. I hope I can get my hands on the others. Found out that some are in paperback in the US, they are just as much as hardback though, not much difference in price... in that case I'd just by the hardback, LOL.

Very good series.

here is my favorite quote:

"...someone was going to suffer, someone was going to be really, really sorry for doing this, before Phryne let them die.

Horror and weakness vanished. No one in her immediate circle had ever seen Phryne really angry and ordinariy she kept this killing rage, a legacy from her Celtic ancestors, a close secret. In this state, she knew, she was literally capable of anything, and not since she had interrupted a couple of her schoolmates torturing a dog had she lost it. Then it had taken the combined efforts of three teachers to hold her and prize the remains of the stable rake from her grasp. She had never regretted learning in that way what a really good rage can do, although---as usual---she had been expelled. She had taken the dog with her, and was willing to bet that those two girls would be very chary of even looking unkindly at a dog ever again. After they got out of the infirmary, of course. "

This passage conveys something more than the cool and aloof exterior you grow accustomed to in the rest of the story. But I really liked it cause I could identify. I can remember as a child getting angry about something, but knowing full well if I ever acted on it, I would be in a heap of trouble. I never could think of a reaction to someone antagonizing me other than physical violence, which I was sure not to do.

Anyhoo... look into this book and the others in the series. "Cocaine Blues" is the first.