This is the book that made me a Maisie fan. We are right there alongside her struggles to survive the iron grip of her WW1 past just as she tries to retrieve others from the darkness. With a captivating story and marvelous characters we want to know better, this is a great work to enter and linger in.

Another good mystery with a tidy ending. Enjoyable.

This novel's plot and background are terrific. I have really only one complaint, and it is in the characters. Maisie is too perfect, too splendidly good at psychology, way beyond the point of realism - she can walk into an empty room and know the psyche of the person, or can hold a garment and understand the emotions of the wearer, etc... And things are just too easy for her and her friends - the solution for a man's opium addictiion is, of course, to call on a few friends, create an action plan, and voila! the problem is more than half-solved, without pain or stress. NOT.

I am going to read one more, because in many ways these are very enjoyable stories, but if Maisie's Mary-sue tendencies remain writ large, I will probably not continue. Sigh...

(This review is for Maisie Dobbs #2- Birds of a Feather)
I have read 2 other books from this charming British mystery series- #1 and #15. After jumping way ahead in the series, I decided I had better go back and read these in order. Going back to book 2 gave me more of an idea of Maisie's origin and the building of her investigation business. She is a skilled detective, but comes up against resistance to her abilities due to being a woman and outside of "official" channels. She is brilliant, intuitive, curious, and able to look at both the big picture and the little details of a case. In this novel she is hired to find a missing young woman for her domineering father. In the course of solving this missing person case she also solves three murders- she is just that good. I loved being immersed in her world of 1930s London and will be reading more of her stories in the future.

This volume has the first two Maisie Dobbs books. Winspear does a wonderful job creating the atmosphere of a post-war England. The stories are complex but very accessible, with positve, believabl endings. Take a slow soothing walk in Maisie's shoes and come away hopeful.

Delightful read.

The second in the series of Masie Dobbs mysteries. Historical fiction and enjoyable read about London between the world wars. Masie is an unconventional woman in a conventional world.

I did like this one for the continued development of Maisie Dobbs but did not think it was as good as the first one.

audiobook

great read. a picture of someone struggling with serious trauma as she enters midlife. Unique historical period and a very convoluted mystery at the center.

This is the first of the series of Maise Dobbs that I've read & although it's not a nail biter mystery I really enjoyed her strong character & the story she portrays as a investigator, somewhat psychic, & humanitarian! look forward to the next book in the series!

This one was very entertaining and I quite enjoyed it. But of course it wasn't as good as the first. That is so difficult to achieve. I do question the anger about boys enlisting in WWI and their families being upset about it. It was a terrible, terrible war. I wonder how anyone remained sane after it. But I know that while the war was going on, and for a couple of years after, maybe, the peace movement was strong. But that didn't last even into Maisie's timeline. That was my big hangup, why would the general populace, as Ms Winspear would have us believe, be even slightly anti-war? There were so few, especially for people who weren't in the peace movement.
That was a very minor criticism. For the most part I thought the book was excellent.