Elegy for Eddie by Jacqueline Winspear (A Maisie Dobbs mystery)

Ah, internet reviews. Is there anything more entertaining, fascinating, repulsive and compelling? Few things can restore one's faith in humanity, or obliterate it, in the span of mere seconds the way a stream of people suddenly given a virtual bully pulpit can.

When it comes to the Maisie Dobbs series on Goodreads, comments abound from readers who love Maisie and the series, but grow weary of our heroine's Pollyanna perfection.  It's a concern I've echoed myself, in fact.

Amongst the many reviews for Elegy for Eddie, however, a particularly astute Goodreads user articulated a great insight into the Maisie Dobbs series and another reason some readers struggle with it. The reader said Jacqueline Winspear was moving away from mystery genre conventions and gravitating more towards writing novels.

I couldn't agree more, but unlike some readers who are disgruntled by this shift, I think Elegy for Eddie exemplifies why this sea change is actually something to look forward to. This installment features themes that necessitate a character complexity that is difficult for the rigid constraints of commercial genre fiction to accommodate.

Basically, Winspear is transcending from the commercial mystery genre into literary fiction, in which the whodunnit is but one thread woven through a complex tapestry of humanity.

For example, Masie, adjusting to newly inherited wealth and in an increasingly serious relationship with the son of her former employer, finds herself struggling spiritually and mentally in this installment.

Her inner struggle with sudden wealth syndrome manifests in the real world when Maisie's working-class past is thrust directly into her present, very financially comfortable professional life. Briefly, Maisie is asked to solve the murder of one of the Covent Garden costermongers  her father used to work with. Those asking are the victim's surviving friends, men who knew Maisie as "Frankie's girl."

Covent Garden today

Winspear's writing shines in interactions such as these. Maisie is forced to confront the somewhat awkward reality that she has indeed done better than her father and his peers financially. She is now an educated, independent and adult woman.

But Maisie finds herself struggling -- just a bit -- to think of herself as an adult in the presence of these men, all of whom suddenly address her as "Miss Dobs" and "ma'am." How can she accept the payment they offer? But how could she hurt their pride and not?

Judging by some of the more negative reviews on both Amazon and Goodreads, this is the kind of introspection that some readers don't have patience for, but I feel lends depth to a character that was in serious danger of becoming a two-dimensional Mary Sue.

This book is also one of the better examples I have ever read in which a complete portrait of the victim is painted through realistic answers to the investigator's questions. So often mystery authors make the mistake of having friends or acquaintances of the murder victim(s) "remember" things in a way people in real life just don't, using well-articulated, perceptive language to describe anecdotes in crisp, pristine detail. Some writers can pull this off without deflating the story (after all, this is pretty much the modus operandi of the entire Holmes canon). But usually recountings like that come across as implausible given the human mind's fallibility when it comes to memory. Winspear avoids this in Elegy for Eddie and, for the most part, the characters' recollections and anecdotes are realistic.

Unfortunately, Maisie's character development isn't quite enough to save the surprising plot sloppiness in this installment. Without going into a synopsis rewrite or spoilers, suffice it to say there are several murders and only one of them is actually explained in any real way. Some mysteries can have realistic, sloppy endings and are improved by them. After all, real life detectives do have cases that are never solved. But, perhaps because the decisions Maisie makes are so jarringly discordant with who she has been up until this point, it doesn't work here.

So, although this is not one of the best Maisie Dobbs mysteries, it was one of the best Maisie Dobbs books in the series. Much of that is due to the fact that Maisie is forced to accept that she must change as a person. 

She is called on to the carpet for her do-gooder meddling in people's lives, confronted with the fact that perhaps her generosity with the Beales might be justifiable cause for some resentment and forced to acknowledge that she doesn't quite know how to maintain her independence while being in a relationship.

Maisie's growth and change is what makes this installment more "novel-esque." It is also what will have me eager to read the next installment. But unfortunately, the mystery suffers for it.  

A Lesson in Secrets by Jacqueline Winspear (A Maisie Dobbs mystery)

We  historical mystery readers can be a pedantic, finicky lot. As a general rule, we don't do well with the passage of time. We want our detectives, investigators and heroes to remain in the Victorian, Edwardian or whatever era in perpetuity, solving mysteries during years that only move forward in passing mention, if at all.

I admit to being guilty of the same stodginess. I get rather nervous when an author brings another technological invention or historical event into my series.

But Jacqueline Winspear has impressed me in A Lesson in Secrets, the latest installment in the Maisie Dobbs series. Although the low rumble of impending World War II was already heard in the previous book, A Mapping of Love and Death, Winspear avoids a common mistake made by authors who chose to deal with the rather tricky decades between the wars in Europe.

That is, she remembers that Maisie, and indeed everyone around her, wouldn't yet think of the Nazis as the personification of evil in 1932, when the book takes place. Winspear does an excellent job showing  that for those just trying to make a living in the tattered economy after World War I, the politics and policies of Germany and Austria were skimmed headlines and background noise to the pressing needs of everyday life.

Winspear deals with dichotomy creatively. She puts Maisie on special assignment for the British Secret Service, placing her in an undercover position as a professor. Maisie is assigned to merely observe the school, founded by a notorious pacifist, in duly inform the Crown about anything going on that may be against their interests, a rather vague assignment.

Naturally, the murder of the college's founder inevitably draws Maisie into another hornet's nest entirely, leaving her navigate the secret service, run her business from afar and solve a murder she's been ordered not to investigate.

By putting Maisie at an academic institution, Winspear deftly gives Maisie, and by extension the reader, a plausible lens through which to examine the events happening on the continent, without any of the inadvertent, righteous hindsight that authors are inevitably forced to confront when writing about the mid- to late-1930s. This is deftly done primarily through discussion between characters and is some of the best period piece writing I have ever seen.

For example, Priscilla, Maisie's upper-crust close friend who drove an ambulance during World War I, casts a wary eye at the German political landscape, but primarily from a fear for her young sons, who are inching towards being old enough to serve in the armed forces. Having lost four brothers in the Great War, Priscilla's fear is palpable but not overwrought or written with any kind of prescient foreknowledge of events to come.

Other highlights of this read include more appearances by Detective Chief Superintendent Robert MacFarlane, who is quickly becoming one of the most interesting characters this rich series has to offer.

Notable character development also occurs with Maisie's father and Maisie's own relationship with James Compton is examined.

However, a kind of sub-plot arc involving Sandra, a former servant of the Comptons, is rather neglected. Maisie can't solve it herself and the story mostly unfolds through phone calls with her assistant, Billy. Because of that, what could be an equally interesting, if secondary, story line, becomes a bit distracting and feels more like an interruption than a separate plot arc.

Also, the last two installments in the series had me a bit concerned Maisie was becoming a bit of a Mary Sue. And while this installment in the series has much to recommend it, I fear Maisie is still walking dangerously close to that line.

Mary Sues are modestly perfect in every way, always of sound judgement and, naturally, coincidentally having whatever talent or ability a given situation calls for, like speaking an esoteric language or just happening to know about the migratory patterns of birds. In short, boring in their often ridiculous preparedness.

Granted, I don't read Maisie Dobbs expecting the gritty, hyper-realistically flawed characters that Denise Mina or Tana French create. That's an entirely different style of mystery, if not a exactly a separate genre. But that being said, Winspear is too talented to let such a wonderful character become two-dimensional.

Winspear seems to address this by making it clear she and James are not waiting for wedding bells to consummate their relationship.  Actually, she makes it a bit too clear, though not through any explicit scenes (yes, a young adult can more than safely read this). Still, it's brought up often enough with comments from other characters that one wants to say, "We get it, already. They're in a conjugal relationship."

But, given the time period, in a way that was a bit rebellious, as is Maisie being a woman entrepreneur and investigator. So perhaps I am being a bit harsh on Winspear in this regard. Still, I think it would be refreshing to see Maisie be bad, or at least not good, at Math or something.

This book also highlights how Masie still goes about trying to solve her assistant's and father's and everyone else's problems. It's not a problem that she does good deeds and finds deft ways to help those she cares about with her new wealth, exactly, but the fact that no one but her father seems to lash out against her flat-out meddling is a bit implausible.

Still, a solid entry into what is still a great series. For once, I am actually looking forward to seeing what impact the march of time and World War II has on the wonderful characters Winspear has created.

Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear

This installment in the Maisie Dobbs is particularly interesting for the light it sheds on a little-known role women played in the movement to have more of England's young men enlist...and shows the subtle ripple effect the encouragement of war without the understanding of it can have. 


The title comes from the British practice by women to give men who were not enlisted in the armed forces a feather as a symbol of the man's supposed cowardice. Many women believed that they really were helping their country by giving the army more men. And of course, plenty of them had little idea of the utter massacre that was taking place in the trenches at the Front in France. 


We learn a bit more about her assistant, Billy--the veteran sapper-- in this novel, and the character development will definitely keep fans of the series on the hook. However, the mystery itself is a tad slow and plodding. This series seems to be developing into one in which the character development is as much an impetus to keep buying the next book as the mystery itself. 

Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear (Maisie Dobbs)

This is a great series. Maisie Dobbs is a smart, intuitive and strong female character who uses body language and Eastern meditation to get to the heart of suspects' minds and motives. After serving as a nurse in the first World War and apprenticing under a the highly-respected government consultant, Maurice, Maisie is hanging out her own shingle as a "psychologist and investigator."

This first book is nicely done as two stories--that of Maisie's upbringing and of her coming of age during the Great War-- folded in to one and is also probably one of the best introductory books to a series I've read in a very long time.

Among the Mad by Jacqueline Winspear (Maisie Dobbs)

Although I enjoy the Maisie Dobbs series and will continue to read these book, I must say this was not one of my favorite installments. 


This book takes Maisie deep into the world of mental health care in the early 1930s. A disenfranchised war veteran who is able to make chemical weapons is threatening to attack the entire city within a matter of days and has, inexplicably, mentioned Maisie Dobbs in the first of several threatening letters. When dead animals that have apparently been gassed begin to show up, the race against the clock becomes all the more urgent. 


Thus Maisie is brought under the umbrella of the Special Branch and MI-5 and even has a tete a tete with the PM, all while racing to save the city. 


There wasn't enough mystery, to put it bluntly. Although Winspear has, as always, thoroughly researched the time period and how mental health was administered, it was fairly obvious from the beginning what was going on. There is some good character/plot development with the Beales, however. 


Fans of the series will enjoy this book, as I did, but it may not be the most memorable of Maisie's adventures.

A Mapping of Love and Death by Jacqueline Winspear (Maisie Dobbs)

In this latest installment of the Maisie Dobbs series, Jacqueline Winspear does not disappoint.

Maisie finds herself investigating the death of an American cartographer who joined the British Army at the onset of WWI in 1914. When his remains are uncovered, he is found in possession of meticulously preserved letters from a woman who only signs her name as "The English Nurse" or "Tennie." His parents, established members of the Boston Brahmins, journey to London and hire Maisie to track down the mysterious woman with whom their son had a war-time affair.

But of course, it's not as simple as that, especially when Maisie reads the coroner's report and begins to suspect that it was not a shell and trench collapse that killed young Michael Clifton after all...

Devoted readers should be warned there is a bit of heartbreak in this book. Several of the character story lines have surprising developments, and Maisie herself forays cautiously once again into love.

Winspear--perhaps even more so than other authors--captures the undercurrent rumblings of the next impending war exceptionally well. She retains her vivid imagery and immersing sense of time and place. All in all, another satisfying read from a very pleasant and interesting series.