Let's Bust a Recap : Maisie Dobbs

Today's recap is actually a double feature of the next two books in the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear. I read the first Maisie Dobbs book during the global COVID-19 lockdown in April of 2020. My mom had borrowed it earlier that year, and she and my dad both loved it so naturally, I had to read it, too. That Christmas, I ended up getting my parents the next five books in the series, and my dad proceeded to read all five of them before my mom and I even got home from our Christmas trip to Germany. Since then, both my parents have acquired and read all seventeen Maisie Dobbs books, the most recent one having just come out earlier this year, and now my Gramma is ten or eleven books in as well. I'm obviously chugging along at a much slower pace, opting to read one each year. But at least now I know I have access to all seventeen whenever I get around to reading the next one because they are all sitting proudly numbered on my parents' shelf. 

Birds of a Feather, the second book in the series, was my Maisie Dobbs novel for 2021, and I managed to squeeze it in right at the tail end of the year. Literally. I ignored my family for most of the day on New Year's Eve finishing it up. This second installment was published in 2004, one year after Winspear's debut of the character in 2003, and in this one it's the spring of 1930 and Maisie has been hired to find a runaway heiress. When three of the young woman's friends turn up dead, Maisie finds herself in a race to find the murderer before it's too late. 

I plucked this copy out of a Little Free Library in 2020 before I bought the books for my parents for Christmas that year, and subsequently used it to fill that slot on The Unread Shelf's book bingo card last year. The conclusion of this one broke my heart as Maisie discovers that the answers to the mystery are tied up in the unforgettable agony of the Great War, but it ultimately ended on a slightly lighter note by introducing a couple of potential love interests for our savvy protagonist that I was keen to watch develop in the coming books. 

Pardonable Lies was published in 2005, and in this complex novel, we see Maisie tackling three cases at once. A 13 year old girl has been accused of murder, but Maisie isn't so sure she's guilty. A deathbed plea from his wife leads Sir Cecil Lawton, KC to seek the aid of our intrepid investigator in confirming the death of his son. And Maisie's friend Priscilla also begs Maisie to find out what happened to her brother Peter during the Great War. But that's not all. Someone is trying to kill Maisie, too. Who would want her dead? 

While the first book of the series is still probably my favorite, this third installment was fantastic. The way Winspear intricately wove Maisie's investigation of these three separate cases together and also continued to bring us along on Maisie's journey of grief over the loss of her own mother at such a young age and all the trauma she endured during the war was really masterful and absorbing. From the very beginning, I've really enjoyed Winspear's pacing in these books, and the quality has remained high through these first three novels. I wasn't planning to read Pardonable Lies so early in the year, but I found myself up at my parents' house one day without my current book in progress and I ended up picking up their copy of the next Maisie Dobbs book and was soon caught up in the mystery.

Maisie Dobbs, Birds of a Feather, and Pardonable Lies have all raked in several awards and nominations, and I would unreservedly recommend any of them. Each can stand on its own, so you don't necessarily have to read the whole series or read the books in publication order to be able to enjoy them. Although my personal recommendation would be to start at the beginning and go in order, if you're just looking for a good mystery to cozy up with, any one will do. Next up for me is Messenger of Truth, and I'm looking forward to it.

Have you read any Maisie Dobbs? Do you like mysteries? Who is your favorite fictional sleuth?