Book Review of
Maisie Dobbs
Maisie Dobbs got her start as a maid in an aristocratic London household when she was thirteen. Her employer, suffragette Lady Rowan Compton, soon became her patron, taking the remarkably bright youngster under her wing. Lady Rowan’s friend, Maurice Blanche, often retained as an investigator by the European elite, recognized Maisie’s intuitive gifts and helped her earn admission to the prestigious Girton College in 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 out 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 working farm known as The Retreat, that acts as a convalescent refuge for ex-soldiers too shattered to resume normal life. When Fate brings Maisie a second case involving The Retreat, she must finally confront the ghost that has haunted her for over a decade.
Lynn's Review
Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear has been in my TBR pile for years. It was published in 2003. I own it in both the paperback and the Kindle version. I don’t remember where I first heard about this series, but I love to read mysteries that are not super graphic. I ended up buying the next couple of books in the series because after reading the first one I couldn’t wait to read more of the series.
This is the first book in the Maisie Dobbs series. It contains a mystery, but it also set the background for the series. Maisie Dobbs lives in England post-WWI. She got her start as a maid, but her employer quickly realized how her love of learning and her brilliance for her young age. Maisie served as a nurse during WWI. After the war, she returns home and becomes a private investigator.
If you love cozy mystery type of books this is a great one.
I’m so glad you enjoyed it! It was intersting how that one started almost like an “Upstairs/Downstairs” type book, and then changed and the rest of the book and series is much more solving mysteries. I very much appreciate how the author tells more of what happens in that time between WW1 and WW2 that we really don’t think about, how all of England was so affected.