A Lesson in Secrets

January 31, 2011
In Winspear's solid eighth Maisie Dobbs novel (after The Mapping of Love and Death), Maisie finds herself financially independent, thanks to a bequest from her late mentor, Dr. Maurice Blanche, and open to new challenges exactly at the moment the British Secret Service seeks to recruit her in 1932. Greville Liddicote, the author of a pacifist children's book that the government went to great pains to suppress during WWI, has founded a college in Cambridge devoted to maintaining peace in Europe. To keep tabs on Liddicote, Maisie infiltrates his school under the guise of a philosophy teacher. When a staff member is murdered, she reverts to her old profession and works to aid the police inquiry from the inside. Maisie's new affluence allows her to intervene benevolently in the lives of those she cares for and her romantic life intensifies, but these positive personal developments end up making her less interesting as a protagonist than formerly. 9-city author tour.

February 15, 2011

Peace can be as deadly as war. Winspear's (The Mapping of Love and Death) eighth Maisie Dobbs mystery opens in 1932 with Maisie accepting an assignment from the British secret service to infiltrate the newly opened College of St. Francis by posing as a philosophy lecturer. That position will enable her to scrutinize the controversial founder, Greville Liddicote, as well as the school's activities and students. Greville's purpose in creating the school is to promote peaceful relations among cultures. The children's books that he wrote are rumored to have caused mutiny among the military during World War I. When Greville is murdered, Maisie becomes concerned, especially when she finds some faculty members are part of a pro-Hitler organization. What dark forces could have destroyed this man of peace? Maisie must sift through the past to find out. VERDICT Winspear strikes the right balance between cozy mystery setting and her intelligent, street-savvy PI. The story adroitly presents a post-World War I world while foreshadowing the next global conflict. Recommended for fans of historical mysteries like those by Charles Todd. [See Prepub Alert, 11/15/10.]--Susan O. Moritz, Montgomery Cty. P.L., MD

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2011

War, peace and Maisie Dobbs' introduction to the German Nationalist Socialist Party.

Maisie, whose accomplishments include wearing tidy linen jackets and hats with ribbons and spending the fortune a mentor left her in aid of chums in need of a boost, is asked to leave her private-enquiry agency and take on a task for the British Secret Service. Would she sign on as a teaching assistant in the philosophy department of Cambridge's College of St. Francis and ferret out goings-on not in the interests of the Crown? The college's founder, Greville Liddicote, has aroused attention because a children's book he authored fomented mutiny during the Great War and had to be suppressed. Liddicote, who founded his college on pacifist precepts, seems oddly opposed to a pro-or-con debate with Cambridge students on Hitler in Great Britain. But his reluctance becomes moot when someone breaks his neck. In between buying a house to resettle her assistant in; attempting to move her dad to more commodious digs; and pining for her lover James off in Canada, Maisie (The Mapping of Love and Death, 2010, etc.) decides to solve the Liddicote murder. She delves into the lives of lecturers and debaters, gets a copy of that banned children's book and warns the Secret Service of growing Nazism among the students. They ignore her concern, and the rest is history.

A pivotal historical moment forced to take a back seat to the heroine's wardrobe and intuition.

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February 1, 2011
The eighth Maisie Dobbs mystery begins as Maisie, a PI in London between the wars, takes on her first assignment for the British intelligence service. She will be working as a junior lecturer at a small college dedicated to peace and understanding among nations, but her real assignment is to look for dissidents and Communists. Soon after she arrives, the famous headmaster of the college is found dead in his office, and Maisie calls in Scotland Yard. With both the police and the intelligence service in town, Maisie is kept extremely busy but not so much that she fails to return to London most weekends to check on her assistant Billy, who has been trusted to work on solo investigations. The numerous activities Maisie manages to fit in and around her duties as a lecturer may push credulity for some readers, but Winspear somehow makes it work, pulling together a solid, three-stranded plot. Series fans will be pleased with both Maisies latest investigations and the developments in her private life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)