Throughout the series, the memories of the Great War smoothly and continuously inform the structure of the books.  I thought that Jacqueline Winspear would run out of the ideas and skill to keep incorporating details about the war into each book, but she does a wonderful job in developing different aspects for every story.  We visited Britain last July, after I was thoroughly immersed in the series, and I found that the many memorials to the dead of the Great War had a much deeper impact on me than before.  I was especially moved by the glorious Five Sisters stained glass window at York Cathedral, restored in honor of the nurses of the Great War.  I’d never particularly noticed such tributes to nurses, and all medical battlefield personnel, before reading Maisie Dobbs.

I’m sure I will reread these books at some point, and this post will provide a base for expanding on my thoughts.  I have been saving the last two books for special treats, but I just scored a great Cheap Kindle Book deal on Elegy for Eddie, the next one in the series ($2.99!) so this is definitely the time to start treating myself.

1. Maisie Dobbs:  In 1929, Maisie Dobbs starts a private investigation business on her own following the retirement of her partner and mentor Maurice Blanche.  As Maisie investigates her first case, centered on a mysterious grave marked only with the name Vincent, there are flashbacks to Maisie’s job as a maid, at age 13, in Lord and Lady Compton’s London mansion.  Flashbacks continue with accounts of Lady Rowan Compton’s discovery of Maisie’s eager intellectual curiosity, which leads to her education with Maurice Blanche and studies at Cambridge.  With the outbreak of the Great War, Maisie volunteers as a military nurse in France, where she meets up again with a dedicated young doctor she met in her Cambridge days.  Maisie’s experiences at medical stations just behind the battle lines are amazingly vivid and realistic, and establish the strength, intuition and compassion of her character with authority.  As Maisie’s investigation in 1929 progresses, she finds that Vincent had lived and died in the long shadow of the Great War, and the shadow awakens her own traumatic war memories, and those of her office assistant Billy Beale.  This book didn’t just capture my attention, it captured my heart.  Jacqueline Winspear’s grandfather lived through the Great War and the long shadow of its aftermath, and she must have breathed in the fear, melancholy and courage of the stories told by her family and their friends about that time, so that she could share them with readers in this incredible book.  (paperback)   
2. Birds of a Feather:  The feather of the title is the white feather left at each of the different murder scenes of three women.  Maisie is drawn into the murder inquiries after she accepts an assignment to find the missing daughter of a wealthy grocery tycoon.  Once again, the origins of the mystery lie in personal tragedies of the Great War.  (Kindle) 
3.  Pardonable Lies:  In the fall of 1930, Maisie reluctantly returns to France to determine the fate of a young aviator who disappeared during the war.  When her Cambridge friend Priscilla Evernden learns Maisie is coming to France, she asks Maisie to also look into the circumstances of her beloved brother’s death in the war.  Maisie’s fears that her return to France will bring back the horrors of her own war experiences come all too true, and she also learns some unwelcome truths about her mentor Maurice Blanche’s activities during the war.  (Kindle)
4. Messenger of Truth:  It’s 1931, and a former Cambridge classmate of Maisie’s asks her to investigate the death of her artist brother Nick Bassington-Hope.  The police determined that the death was the result of an accidental fall, but Georgina Bassington-Hope isn’t convinced.  Once again, the case draws Maisie back into the devastating consequences of the war for veterans like Nick.  As the memories of the war fade for the greater British population, a new menace, the economic devastation of the Great Depression takes hold, and Maisie is appalled at the deep divide between the hard hit working people and people like the eccentric Bassington-Hope family, whose members seem resolved to separate both Nick’s war memories and contemporary economic suffering from their sheltered lives.  The resolution of the investigation includes a foreshadowing of the coming second World War.   (Kindle)
5. An Incomplete Revenge:  The Comptons’ son James has returned to lead the family business, and asks Maisie to look into mysterious crimes taking place in a Kent village where he plans to make a major investment in land.  Maisie’s assistant Billy Beale, an increasingly important character in his own right, and his family come to Kent each year for the hop harvest, and he accepts an undercover assignment as Maisie’s eyes and ears in the village.  The conflict between  a group of gypsies Maisie befriends and the locals, who are harboring a deadly secret dating from the Great War, adds to the menace of the situation.  With the gypsies, Maisie finds wisdom and healing for some of her painful war memories, as well as a reconnection with her dead mother’s heritage.  I found her friendship with a gypsy dog, the lurcher Jook, a particularly poignant part of the story.  (Kindle)  
6. Among the Mad:  At Christmas time in 1931, Maisie is a horrified witness to the suicide of a severely disabled war veteran on a busy street.  As a witness, and then because of her reputation as a psychological investigator, she is drawn into an elite police force’s intense hunt for a deranged man who has threatened mass murder as retaliation for the suffering of forgotten veterans.  The threat becomes very real as mysterious deaths in London reveal the killer’s capabilities.  At the same time, Maisie’s assistant and friend Billy and his family are forced to contend with the hazards of treatments for the mentally ill in 1930s Britain.  Maisie’s connections with prominent members of the mental health profession are vital in the race to find the killer, and to help Billy’s family.   (Kindle)
7. The Mapping of Love and Death:  When a diary and love letters are found with the remains of an American cartographer killed on a battlefield of the Great War, his wealthy parents ask Maisie to locate the mysterious nurse their son loved.  Michael Clifton’s adventurous spirit and integrity and his work as a cartographer are described so well that the tragedy of his death is very real.  When Maisie begins to suspect that he may have been murdered instead of dying in combat, the amorality  and horror of the crime and the menacing presence of the killer are so strong I could feel it.  As Maisie works to find justice for Michael, she must also face the impending loss of her mentor Maurice Blanche and resolve her differences with him.  This book made the greatest impression on me since reading the original book in the series.   (library eBook)  
8. A Lesson in Secrets:  The British Secret Service assigns Maisie to work undercover as a junior lecturer at a college in Cambridge observing pacifist college members suspected of Communist sympathies.  The founder of the college, author of a pacifist children’s book banned during the Great War for reputedly inspiring soldiers to mutiny on the battlefield, is murdered soon after Maisie arrives.  As Maisie assists with the murder investigation, as well as her original assignment to uncover conspiracy, she discovers that a growing German/British Nazi group could be the real threat.  In London Sandra, another former housemaid in the Compton household, asks Maisie and Billy to investigate the suspicious death of her husband Eric in an accident at his job in a garage.  Eric’s death hits even harder because he was the Comptons’ former chauffeur and helped Maisie take care of the beloved MG she bought from Lady Rowan Compton in the first book in the series and has driven ever since.  While I found the spy and conspiracy plot in this book less than compelling, the prominence and further development of series characters like Billy, Priscilla, Sandra, Frankie and James was a spot-on delight.  (library eBook)    
9. Elegy for Eddie  (Kindle)
10. Leaving Everything Most Loved

One of the hardest parts was finding a book to borrow.  I have an extensive list of books I would like to read, and I tried some titles and authors once I got into the eBook library, but they didn’t have any of them.  Prolific cosy mystery author Carolyn Hart was on my list, and when I put in her name, one of her books, Ghost in Trouble, was actually available to borrow.  Once I found a book, I went through the screen prompts to put it on my Kindle.  I hit a snag when the screen told me my circa 2009 Kindle 2 didn’t have the necessary whatsit to receive the book directly, I would have to download it through the USB port.  After much random button pushing that did not make the book appear on my Kindle (properly plugged into the USB port), I finally discovered My Kindle Library on my Amazon account online.  Never knew that was there.  Ghost in Trouble had made it into my Library, I hit the correct button and there it was on the Kindle.

Ghost in Trouble is about someone named Bailey Ruth who died, went to heaven, and goes back to earth sometimes to solve mysteries.  As a ghost, Bailey can change her clothes and hairstyles at will, and Carolyn Hart describes each outfit in detail.  The plot actually wasn’t bad, but the cutesy ghost was irritating.  As a first try at borrowing an eBook, Ghost in Trouble was a great success; the book itself, not so much.  This is what public libraries are for: trying new authors.  Maybe some of Hart’s other cosy series are OK, but this one didn’t do it for me.

Since then, I’ve had much better success finding books.  I borrowed the first two books from Susan Elia MacNeal’s Maggie Hope series:  Mr. Churchill’s Secretary and Princess Elizabeth’s Spy.  In 1940, American Maggie Hope shares the London house she inherited from her grandmother with a group of other young women.  A friend gets British-by-birth Maggie a job on Winston Churchill’s secretarial staff, where she seizes the chance to use her mathematical education and code breaking skills to get unofficially involved in espionage.  Churchill himself is a character in Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, and the unraveling of a plot to assassinate him is central to the book.  Details about life in wartime Britain support the story, although I find Maggie a little too opinionated and brash for the period. The Brits don’t seem to mind, especially when she puts her life on the line to thwart the assassins.  Princess Elizabeth’s Spy is the second book in the series, with Maggie Hope, now a member of British Intelligence, assigned to protect a young Princess Elizabeth.  Princess Elizabeth and other members of the royal household are characters in the book, and the author does a good job with the people and the setting.  Maggie’s friends and coworkers in these books are often interesting in their own right, and have their own concerns and important roles to play in the action.  These books don’t have the substance of the Maisie Dobbs books, but they are good historical mysteries.

I was well into the Maisie Dobbs series when I discovered library eBooks, and was happy to borrow The Mapping of Love and Death and A Lesson in Secrets, the 7th and 8th books in the series.  I love the way Maisie and the people she knows change and develop as the books progress.  There is a real sense of time passing in this series, and Maisie matures and grows deeper and more interesting in each book.  I’ve actually put off reading the last two books, because I will be sad when they are over.

I put a hold on The Bridge of Sighs, by Olen Steinhauer, and didn’t have to wait too long to borrow it.  The hold system is great:  you can see how many holds are before you, and an e-mail notification comes when the book is available.  The Bridge of Sighs is one of Steinhauer’s Eastern Europe novels, set in a grim post-World War II Communist country full of brutality and corruption.  The characters were dull and/or venal, and it just wasn’t interesting.  I thought the Milo Weaver novels I’ve read, The Tourist and The Nearest Exit, were much better.

I also found more books by two other authors I recently discovered, Steve Berry and Robert Crais.  I borrowed The Templar Legacy and The Alexandria Link, the first two books in Berry’s Cotton Malone series.  Berry might sensationalize history, but he knows enough about the facts to keep things in hand.  I also read The Third Secret, one of Steve Berry’s stand alone books and found the Catholic conspiracy plot confusing and a little slow .  I borrowed one of Robert Crais’ Elvis Cole novels, The Last Detective, and thought it wasn’t just a good thriller, it was a good novel.  I didn’t like the next Elvis Cole book I borrowed, Stalking the Angel, nearly as much.  This is an earlier book in the series, and it was violent, and most of the characters were awful, with no redeeming qualities.  I was disappointed.

On-line borrowing seems to work best when I’m looking for books by popular authors I already know about.  There are too many books in each category and the system is too slow to make browsing easy.  The tricky thing is getting the timing of the loans right:  two weeks go by very quickly, especially if I have other things to read.