I finished reading Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs yesterday and I loved it. I can start this review by saying this one was an A.
It is set in the 1920s and when we meet Maisie she has just established herself as a Private Investigator. As she starts investigating her first case we are given a view of her past as a young house maid and then, through hard work and kind employers, as a student in Cambridge University and after that as a nurse in France during World War II.
I particularly liked two things, the sense of time and place of the descriptions and the psycological approach to every situation. Maisie's interactions with other people are always analised by her according to the teachings of her mentor, Maurice Blanche. There's a part in the book where he asks her what she wants to do and she replies: I want to do what you do. I want to heal people!
The first case Maisie investigates while seeming just an ordinary infidelity case will make her revisit her past, relive the horrors of the war and the problem the wounded soldiers faced on returning home not whole and finally it will make her deal with the loss of her love.
I can't wait to get my hands on the second book, as a matter of fact I read this one as part of a bookring but I think I'll have to find my own copy soon. I want to keep it and reread it.
I think I am going to read this series after I finish the Phryne Fisher series!
ReplyDeleteAnd I think I'll have to look for the Phryne Fisher series!
ReplyDeleteYes! I'm SO glad it's good. Not only because I'm very happy that you read a good book, but because I paid big $$ getting this one here. I bought it in a 2-in-1 edition, together with the next in the series, and it's a HUGE book. Heavy, too, so probably half the cost of my M-Bag was this book! ;-)
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