Maisie Dobbs

It’s so awesome to have a female detective during World War I – and one who’s solving exciting, active cases while building her career from the ground up!

This book is exciting, thrilling, and a whole lot of fun.

For all the fawning praise I've heard for this series, this wasn't what I expected. And I'm pretty mad about it. I might feel conflicted about giving a 1-star rating to a book that isn't badly written-- but Goodreads says 1 star means "did not like it" and, well, I did not like it.

I picked this book up expecting a quick cozy mystery with a wartime British setting. Consequently I didn't demand much in terms of writing or character development, and for the first 60-ish pages I didn't flinch at the clichéd descriptions of the svelte attractive Lady Detective™ with her unerring instincts and modest suits. I didn't mind that she seems to solve cases with tingly feelings rather than actual brainpower. I allowed Winspear to tell me that Maisie is intuitive and "judicious" for avoiding physical contact with crying people. I rolled with the crazy overuse of names, including full names ("I tell you, Maisie Dobbs, you're one of a kind!"), and pretended that the words of guidance from Maisie's wise old mentor were actually profound ("Ah, as Maurice would say, the wisdom of hindsight!"). I tried to ignore the bizarre ethical breach when, called to investigate whether a woman is unfaithful to her husband, Maisie pretends to be the poor woman's friend under a false identity. I tried harder to ignore the implication that the woman was happier because she poured her heart out to a girlfriend who then ghosted on her. (And I strictly forbade myself from imagining the wife finding out that her supposed friend was actually being paid by her husband to spy on her.) Through all this, I was waiting for the real case to reveal itself.

In The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, we see the (charming, original) protagonist work through a series of small cases that aren't that suspenseful on their own, with one big ugly case lurking in the background. I thought at first that's what was happening here. Maisie follows the suspected-cheater wife to a cemetery, and notices that several of the graves have only first names on them. They're all former soldiers who lived at this home for traumatized and/or disfigured men, called "The Retreat." Maisie's Lady Detective™ senses tell her that something's amok with this place where nameless men keep dying, but then we drop everything because it's backstory hour!

Beginning on about page 65, Winspear unleashes a load of backstory that really should've been a separate prequel. Or maybe just edited out. We learn about Maisie's humble beginnings as a ludicrously gifted teen maid who gets up at 3am to read Hume in secret until Lady Rowan catches her and decides to let this guy Maurice tutor the girl. The book goes pure "Phantom Menace" as Maurice tests her blood for midichlorians makes her answer questions about Kierkegaard and brings her before the Jedi council this wise old blind man. He discusses Maisie's ability to anticipate future events by being so incredibly smart and I'm 75% sure that he says, "It's a Jedi trait." We listen to multiple characters tell us how amazingly brilliant Maisie is for dozens of pages with almost no plot movement, but the closest we get to seeing Maisie show some smarts is when she describes an incident in the kitchen as "hilarious." Her father responds, "'Ilarious, was it? ...Can't use ordinary words anymore. Got to use big ones now, 'aven't you?" So now we all have newfound respect for the intelligence of anyone who uses the complex word "hilarious."

But the backstory keeps going, past all bounds of decency. Maisie goes to college but, due to events designed to tug at our heartstrings, she realizes that she needs to contribute to the war effort and drops out to become a nurse. Before she enlists, she meets doctor Simon Lynch at a dinner party, and endless story short, they run into each other again during their war duties and fall in love. (Oh, and this is important: Maisie wore a blue silk dress to that dinner party, which I know because we're reminded at least 7 times throughout the rest of the book.) Simon asks her to marry him and she defers until the war is over. And then, with dark hints that something terrible happens to Simon (mostly in the form of Maisie's prophetic bad feelings during the everlasting backstory), we zap back to the present. What page is it? It's page 205, thanks for asking. That backstory-- which didn't even bother to resolve its own internal plot or tell us what happened to Simon-- has taken 140 pages of our lives away.

Back in the post-war present, about 11-12 years after the events described above, we struggle to remember what the nascent "mystery" is about or who certain characters are. After a couple conspicuously-placed references to her "apprenticeship" as a detective, we also realize that with all the heaping helpings of backstory we've been given, we have no idea how this lady got to be a detective. Did she even graduate from college? And where did she learn to read people's minds by mimicking their postures? But put that aside, because Maisie is making her most unethical decision yet. She knows a poor handyman in her building, Billy, feels indebted to her because she and Simon saved his leg during the war. So without consulting him, she tells everyone he's her brother, sets up a fake bank account for him, and signs him up to live at this "Retreat" where men mysteriously die. She's sure she can guilt him into living at this dangerous place as her spy, and she's right-- he agrees to go.

The climax of the book hits fast and unsatisfyingly. Billy seems to get along well at the Retreat until another man expresses a desire to leave and then disappears. We learn all this through the great technique of having one character provide exposition to another in dialogue. Maisie runs to Maurice to help her solve the case, and he phones a friend who gives them vital clues: all the dead men died at dawn, and all their post-mortems were done by the same doctor (who happens to have the same last name as the man who runs the Retreat). Maisie gets around to feeling worried for the man she coerced into endangering his life, and then we find out the incredible (as in, "cannot be believed") solution: the man who runs the Retreat used to execute wartime deserters and went mad. Now, whenever anyone tries to leave the Retreat, he executes the "deserter" by hanging, with every single person who lives there sitting in the audience and watching. And no one says anything. Then the doctor (his cousin) assigns a fake cause of death and takes all the dead man's money. They're about to hang Billy when Maisie walks up the aisle and sings a beloved wartime tune. All the men join in, and the evil executioner is filled with "inner confusion." Maisie puts her hand on his heart, and he breaks down and tries to shoot himself before dissolving into crazy rocking and moaning until the police arrive.

The police inspector compliments Maisie for some reason, presumably because he's a fan of imperiling innocent people, and it seems like we'll soon be free to leave-- but we know that the mystery of What Ever Happened to Simon Lynch remains unsolved. Finally on page 274 (!), Billy asks, "What happened to that doctor?" And so we switch one more time back to the war, making this book more flashback than the movie "Titanic." In a vague, sloppy way, we're told what we already knew: that the hospital Simon worked at was bombed. Back in the present, Maisie realizes that she needs to come to terms with it all: "The final part of her healing was near." There's just one more twist before Winspear wraps up. The twist is that Simon didn't die, just received head injuries. He's been hospitalized ever since, and Maisie hasn't been to visit him one single time in over ten years. Now she goes to see him and calls him her "love" and tells him that she "knew something dreadful was going to happen" before it did. We're told she spends 20 minutes with him and then leaves. I'm really glad that Winspear told me so many times what a great person Maisie is, or I'd be inclined to think she's a selfish unfeeling jerk.

The Nancy Drew comparisons other people have made aren't unfair; this novel is trope-filled in the extreme, right down to its depictions of the "tendrils of black hair" constantly escaping from Maisie's smooth coif. But Nancy Drew books can at least be fun. And Nancy never turns to her plump friend Bess and says, "You go in first, and maybe I'll sing you a song if you're about to die." I'm bitter that the hype made me purchase three books in this series sight unseen, and I can only hope Maisie spends the entire rest of this series making amends for her behavior in this book-- and that Winspear has finally run out of backstory to give her.

Half of this is pointless and because of that half, most of it is flat and boring.

I liked this introductory book to the Maisie Dobbs' series. It was a well written and interesting concept that did a number of things quite well. For one, it gave us intertwined with a mystery background the former life and love of Maisie. It also presented to us the crippling effect that World War 1 had on the people of England and how they all pitched in the war effort to win this horrific war. It also presented us with a very intelligent woman who does become a detective which I believe was probably not the occupation of the day.

I intend to read more in the series as I found Maisie to be a compelling character and one I am sure will be so in the coming novels I will read. She seems like a more modern day Sherlock Holmes and of course she is female which adds to the freshness of this book.

The debut book of this series, with a spunky but emotionally scarred MC. It is pushed as a historical fiction mystery but there really wasn't a lot of mystery in the story. Most of it was building the backstory of Maisie and how she came to be an investigator with perhaps some psychic abilities although that is not how her special sense is described. Set in the late 1920's, she is setting up her business and we start out on her first case, as that unfolds her backstory is inserted. That first case leads to a heightened interest in a "retreat" for disfigured WWI veterans that has her radar up, and she moves more rapidly forward with it when a son of her benefactress seeks to enter the Retreat. She enlists the aid of her mentor and her "johnny-on-spot" handyman, Billy.

I think the purpose of this first book was to introduce the MC, obviously, and many of the other supporting characters that I'm sure will be regulars in the series. I did find the end a little troubling as it didn't seem to fit with how Maisie approaches issues. Perhaps there is more to the story.

DNF @ p. 63

I know, I have issues with historical fiction. I fully acknowledge this and I give books quite a bit of the benefit of my doubt for that exact reason.

However, let's take a look at a paragraph from Maisie Dobbs that has impressed me particularly:

Once across the bridge, Maisie descended into the depths of Westminster underground railway station and took the District Line to Charing Cross station. The station had changed names back and forth so many times, she wondered what it would be called next. First it was Embankment, then Charing Cross Embankment, and now just Charing Cross, depending upon which line you were traveling. At Charing Cross she changed trains, and took the Northern Line to Goodge Street station, where she left the underground, coming back up into the sharp morning air at Tottenham Court Road. She crossed the road, then set off along Chenies Street toward Russell Square. Once across the square, she entered Guilford Street, where she stopped to look at the mess the powers that be had made of Coram’s Fields. The old foundling hospital, built by Sir Thomas Coram almost two hundred years before, had been demolished in 1926, and now it was just an empty space with nothing to speak of happening to it. “Shame,” whispered Maisie, as she walked another few yards and entered Mecklenburg Square.
Named in honor of Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, who became queen consort upon her marriage to George III of England, the gracious Georgian houses of the square were set around a garden protected by a wrought-iron fence secured with a locked gate. Doubtless a key to the lock was on a designated hook downstairs at the Davenham residence, in the butler’s safekeeping. In common with many London squares, only residents had access to the garden.
Maisie jotted a few more lines in her notebook, taking care to reflect that she had been to the square once before, accompanying Maurice Blanche during a visit to his colleague, Richard Tawney, the political writer who spoke of social equality in a way that both excited and embarrassed Maisie. At the time it seemed just as well that he and Maurice were deep in lively conversation, so that Maisie’s lack of ease could go unnoticed.
While waiting at the corner and surveying the square, Maisie wondered if Davenham had inherited his property. He seemed quite out of place in Mecklenburg Square, where social reformers lived alongside university professors, poets, and scholars from overseas. She considered his possible discomfort, not only in his marriage but in his home environment. As Maisie set her gaze on one house in particular, a man emerged from a neighboring house and walked in her direction. She quickly feigned interest in a window box filled with crocus buds peeking through moist soil. Their purple shoots seemed to test the air to see if it was conducive to a full-fledged flowering. The man passed. Maisie still had her head inclined toward the flowers when she heard another door close with a thud, and looked up.

The impression is not a good one. You see, the reason this section particularly stuck with me is that I have a particular soft spot for Mecklenburgh Square. It's where Sayers lived when she penned the first Wimsey novel. It's also where Sayers establishes her other main character, Harriet Vane. Apart from Sayers, there are numerous other writers of note that lived in this area. So, when I was in London earlier this year, I made a point of visiting the place.

Not only is it "Mecklenburgh", with an "h", rather than "Mecklenburg" (unless you're referring to Sayers' fictionalised "Mecklenburg Sq."), but most of the houses have a gap between the windows and the pavement, which is fenced off.

The buildings don't really have windowsills wide enough to hold window boxes - and this is the usual style all around the square from what I remember. As the buildings wound be the same as described in Maisie Dobbs' setting, I doubt this has changed since 1929.

There are window boxes, but if a person is standing near one, the person would be standing at an entrance. And staring at a window box standing at the front door of a house without seeming to want to enter or knock...Well, I'm sorry but I can't think of many things that look even more suspicious.

Also, why do we need the lessons in London tube stations and the history of the square itself? What has any of this to do with the story?

This sort of Oh-look-how-much-research-I've-done-info-dumping has happened throughout the book so far, and of course we also have the dreaded descriptions of fashion. I can't stand descriptions of fashion details that have no relevance to the scene.

Like this one:

“I see. Mr. Davenham, this is a delicate situation. Before I proceed, I must ask for you to make a commitment to me—”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“A commitment to your marriage, actually. A commitment, perhaps, to your wife’s well-being and to your future.”
Christopher Davenham stirred uneasily in his chair and folded his arms.
“Mr. Davenham,” said Maisie, looking out of the window, “it’s a very fine day now, don’t you think? Let’s walk around Fitzroy Square. We will be at liberty to speak freely and also enjoy something of the day.”
Without waiting for an answer, Maisie rose from her chair, took her coat from the stand, and passed it to Christopher Davenham who, being a gentleman, stifled his annoyance, took the coat, and held it out for Maisie. Placing her hat upon her head and securing it with a pearl hatpin, Maisie smiled up at him. “A walk will be lovely.”

So, here is a client with a tricky problem, and we switch the focus from the conversation to a hat pin? WTF?

And don't get me started on Maisie's trying to fix the man's marriage...how well would this have gone down in 1929...unless you're Parker Pyne, Agatha Christie's famous "detective of the heart"?

So, yeah, this book so far lacks all credibility for me and the over-indulgence in pointless detail is distracting from any of the interesting aspects of the novel such as how people dealt with war wounds - physical and mental. There was much promise in this, but little has been made of it so far.

In short, this is an example of why I prefer non-fiction history or, particularly with respect to book set between 1900 and 1945, books written at the actual time.

Maisie Dobbs is one of those easy to love kind of characters. She is a brilliant young housemaid who is discovered by her British aristocratic employer whose patronage leads her to Cambridge and beyond. However, WWI breaks out and things happen which will change the course and perspective of her life. The first of this series is in part a synopsis of her life and how she is to eventually become a private investigator and in part a mystery to be uncovered all dealing and interconnected with the war. I listened to this one and enjoyed "hearing" Maisie's voice. I will continue with the series.

3.75 stars

I really enjoyed this story. It was a nice comfort read and I liked the setting of time and place, as well as the balance between mystery and getting to know the characters. I will continue with the series.