Book 1 of 17

I fell in love with Maisie Dobbs and her story. This book is a story about an adolescent to a young adult and her life in-between, its about war, wounded veterans, family, dedication, determination, friendship, love and so much more. I listened to this book on audio and it was very calm, informative and relaxing. As we are currently seeing the war between Russia and Ukraine my heart is very sad for all who were forced to be into times of terror.

If you love historical fiction where the woman is a Boss, you will like this book/series.

At the end of the book Maisie has claimed her title as a psychiatrist/detective, so I can't wait to read the next book to see what and how Maisie brings it!!

Maisie is sweet and educated but she is also strong and fierce and I am here for all of it!!

MAURICE: "Look, Rowan, it's our new friend, Maisie!

ROWAN: "What's that name again? I forgot."

MAISIE: "Welllllllllllll...
The name's Maisie D.,
And I rock the telly!
I'm half-Joe Camel
And a third Fonzarelli!
I'm the kung fu hippie
From Gangsta City!
I'm a rappin' surfer,
You're the fool I pity!"

ROWAN: "Ooh, Maisie is one outrageous dudette!"

MAURICE: "She's totally in my face!"

I remember reading this years ago with my library book discussion group.

It was... A great discussion for a mystery group - especially since we are talking pre-DNA crime-solving strategies.

So... We have Maisie, a young woman, in 1929 as a private investigator using her intuitive thinking in a man's world attempting to be taken seriously.

And...Maisie is curious, she is intellectual, who can easily get herself in trouble and does quite frequently.

Thus...A wonderful historical series.

At least... This first book is a great entrance to Maisie's world.

4,5*. Me ha gustado muchísimo cómo está escrito (y tan bien traducido) el libro. El personaje de la protagonista también me ha gustado mucho, he empatizado con ella. Magníficamente documentada, no le doy 5 estrellas porque la trama inicial no la he visto excelentemente hilada a la trama principal, por lo que al final del libro me ha costado recordar el inicio. No obstante, es una magnífica obra digna de leer.

This book is something of a departure for me -- it's rare that I read semi-cozy historicals, leaning as I do toward the harder end of things (Alan Furst is as cozy as I get). But after being badgered by my authors' group into at least considering writing a semi-cozy historical myself, I wanted to see what the territory looks like. So here we are.

Maisie Dobbs (the character) was born into the top edge of the lowest rung of the class ladder during the last gasp of the Victorian Era. When her mother died, she was on her way to becoming what Henry Higgins would call "a pris'ner of the gutter" when her beloved father sold her into service at a posh, titled house. This was one of a long string of lucky breaks for her; the mistress of the house was not only loaded, but striving to be progressive in that notably retrogressive era. A tutor/mentor, a hall pass to the family's well-stocked library, and the flexing of the inordinate bounty of natural gifts young Maisie was born with led her to university, service as a nurse during the Great War, and finally her very own private detective agency. That's the state of play when we meet her at the start of the book. She takes on the unenviable job of determining whether a gentleman's wife is stepping out on him; in the course of this case, she hears rumors about a convalescent home for grievously injured WWI vets in which said veterans are dropping like flies. The game is then afoot.

So how is it to spend nearly three hundred pages with Miss Dobbs? It's not entirely a bad experience. She's level-headed, fastidious, prudent (usually), and personable when she wants/needs to be. All admirable qualities, but admirable doesn't always add up to interesting. Maisie's a bit of a stick in the mud. When you tot up all her positive qualities, add her uncanny luck (she should play the National Lottery), and subtract her negative attributes (hardly any), you can be forgiven for thinking she should skip the gumshoe business and audition to be Mary Poppins' stand-in ("perfect in every way," in case you've never seen the film). I won't speak of the dreaded Mary Sue syndrome, but I will point out that some of my fellow reviewers have justifiably made exactly that accusation.

The rest of the characters are types rather than fully dimensional people. Lady Rowan, Maisie's moneybags benefactor and sponsor, is the unstoppable human bulldozer; Lord Rowan seems often befuddled and is thoroughly cowed by his dynamo wife; Billy, Maisie's janitor-cum-assistant, has a heart of gold, an "H" deficit, and is entirely devoted to her. Maurice Blanche, the tutor/mentor I mentioned earlier, is not exactly Yoda but does have Yoda-like characteristics. (I kept waiting for the inevitable "Do or do not. There is no 'try.'" Alas, I'm still waiting.)

The author is capable of a nice turn of phrase when it's called for. The characters hit their marks when they need to and say things that are at least plausible. She clearly did a great deal of research on the settings and the era (the 1920s); sadly, she put most of it on the page. There's little that's mysterious about the mystery -- if you've read more than three mysteries in your life, you'll know what's going on inside that convalescent home long before Maisie susses it. These aren't exactly unusual failings in a debut novel, so you may be inclined to forgive the author's sins this time around. Except...

The biggest problem with this story is structural. Typically, the series lead's origin story is parceled out as we need it across multiple episodes, or it's a reader-magnet novella. Here, it's the middle third of the book. Yes: no sooner does Our Miss Dobbs embark on her quest to sort out the Mystery of the Expiring Ex-Soldiers than we get slammed back to 1910 to relive the making of Maisie Dobbs. By the time we rejoin the main story arc, we've forgotten what it is.

I was hoping I'd like this more than I did. As heavily feted as the book is, I was expecting at least more technical prowess. Is this the typical semi-cozy historical mystery? I don't know yet, but I hope not.

Maisie Dobbs (the book) is a promising series debut hobbled by skin-deep characterization, a lead character who's far too good for this world, and a catastrophic plotting failure that leaches most of the suspense from the already suspense-deficient main plot. If you don't mind this, there are sixteen more of these waiting for you. Clearly, the author's giving her audience something it likes. I'll give Maisie another try later, after the author and her creation have found their respective feet.

Maisie Dobbs starts out in the late 1920s, with Maisie just setting up her investigation business. It gets into the first real case, then takes a significant detour into the past to give Maisie’s backstory - I’d say probably half the book shows her childhood up through WWI nursing experiences. So although there’s a mystery, it really felt like a WWI historical novel much of the time, along with the horrors and sadness it left behind. Once Maisie’s character is fully established, it comes back to the original mystery and wraps it up quickly. The story of the past does end up being related to the mystery, so it all ties together in the end.

I found the story absorbing. I really liked Maisie - she’s smart and manages to work her way out of servitude using her brains and her connections. But once WWI comes into her life, the story takes a tragic turn. For some time after finishing it, I felt haunted by it. It was so sad! Usually, this would have stopped me from enjoying it, but the surrounding narrative of Maisie’s life in the 1920s made me feel that this is just the beginning of Maisie’s story. I have hope that she will find her way out of the grief and pain of what’s behind her and be able to forge a new life. I’m guessing that future installments will also focus less on her personal story and more on whatever mysteries she’s investigating.

One thing I found kind of weird is the way that Maisie conducts her investigations. I would have thought her brains would come into it more, but she relies on some sort of sixth sense. For example, she puts herself in the physical position of the person she’s studying, and that allows her to feel what they are feeling. She uses that intuition to help her solve her cases. She also has premonitions and there’s more emphasis on general intuition than facts and clues. I don’t know if this will bother me going forward or not. Her mind is sharp, so I’d like to see her use it as well as her hunches.

For now, I know that her story affected me, and I want to see what’s in store for her.


Original Thoughts:

I really enjoyed this, even though it was really sad in places. Review to come...

This was just the sort of book I needed to read at the moment. Struggling to get into several books I have tried, finding it hard to concentrate or finding them too depressing, this book was easy to get into and although it deals with many sad facts about WWI, I found this good escapism.

I generally don’t like stories that skip back and forth in time but this one was easy to follow and I enjoyed glimpses into the past that helped make sense of the future. I particularly enjoyed reading about Maisie as a child. I was in awe of her enthusiasm to fit in extra learning time by getting up at 3am, not many teenagers do that these days. I must tell my daughter about that bit.

The mystery was interesting and I learnt some facts about WWI I had no idea about. Although there are sad elements, nothing is too distressing or graphic. It’s a book that could produce a tear but not one that will have you sobbing or leave you feeling down. I did enjoy the characters and I’m looking forward to reading more in this series.

It took me a few tries to start this book. Probably the only reason I finally read it was because I'm trying to read the books I already have, instead of adding to my ever growing pile of books to read.

Maisie Dobbs is a new private eye in post WWI London, setting up shop and trying to earn a good client base in a world still getting used to the working woman outside of service. With a cunning mind, great determination, and a bit of luck and help along the way (from a supportive father and a liberal and open minded employer) Maisie has been able to go from a young girl in service to studying at a University to making her own way in the world. With the outbreak of WWI, and the sudden death of a friend, she is moved to put her dreams on hold to join up as a field nurse to help the boys at war. The first book in the Maisie Dobbs series; it sheds some light on what happened to Maisie in the passed during the war, while also following along as she uses everything her mentor Maurice Blanch taught her to solve the mysteries brought to her by clients or ones she discovers along the way.

I found this book a bit hard to get into. A number of parts felt like filler, constantly having the character going back over what had just occurred. That is not a bad tool to use, but I felt it was used far too often. Many of the characters I felt were more of a caricature, few of them felt real, or had any real depth to them.

The book starts off in 1929 as Maisie is just setting up her detective agency after her mentor retires. It shows her close relationship with her once employer Lady Rowan, and her admiration for her mentor Maurice. She is portrayed as very careful with her finances and meticulous with her work. She gets her first clients with help from Lady Rowan, and along the way of investigating she uncovered a much bigger mystery. The book then jumps back to 1910, just after Maisie has lost her mother, it follows Maisie through having to go into service to help her now savings-less father, to University and to the outbreak of WWI. It speeds through time from when she decides to leave school to help the cause as a nurse to the time she ends up on the battlefields in France.

I found this portion of the book, where Maisie's background is revealed, to be very dry. It hols all of the major events in Maisie's life but didn't feel like a huge impact. Maisie felt like a robot during this time period. Except for when she herself decides use the great library without permission, she goes along doing as she is told with little emotion. Nose to the grindstone yes, but since it offered little colour to Maisie's character I lack feeling towards her.

It wasn't until things really start rolling and being revealed towards the later half of the book, after it jumps back to 1929, that I actually am finally really turning pages. I found the the conclusion very interesting and did enjoy how it was all finally revealed and the path taken to get to it.

It took a sleepless night to finally finish this book, and I'm not sure when or if I will be starting the second book in the Maisie Dobbs story.

In general I prefer to confine the term 'Mary Sue' to fan fiction, where it belongs. But when I tell you that Maisie has purple eyes, rippling black hair, outstanding intelligence, a near-psychic empathy with her clients, and is practically perfect in every possible way & I think I may be allowed an exception. On top of all this, the author researched the First World War background for this very, very thoroughly and, oh, how it shows! Throw in a faithful Cockernee sidekick (wiv an 'eart of gold), a salt-of-the-earth costermonger father (also wiv an 'eart of gold), an eccentric Suffragist and her household (ALL with hearts of gold) and & I can hardly bear to say it, but a denouement that involves our heroine thwarting the bad guy by bursting into song & I'm afraid it's simply dreadful.

This book just didn't work for me. Maisie Dobbs was mostly annoying and a very boring character and the story was very bland.I liked the ending, but probably not enough to want to read more books about Miss Dobbs unless anyone can convince me that they will get better.

I got about 2/3 of the way through this audiobook and just couldn't take it anymore. Maisie is the flattest character I have read in a long time, and in fact I can't even think of a flatter character. She is a one-dimensional, and oh too good to be true, character doing all the "right" things, I just couldn't listen to it anymore. Some of the book's critics have compared her to Nancy Drew; well I read all of the Nancy Drew books and Maisie Dobbs is no Nancy Drew, she could only hope to have 1/2 of Nancy Drew's spunk.

This was recommended by a friend and I have to say that I am loving it. I cry in all the wrong places - it's the happy parts of the book that make me cry. It makes me realize that I live an easy life.