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5.0étoiles sur 5
Maisie deals with Ghosts of the Past, Déc 26 2009
Maisie is faced with the ghosts of the past. Her own and those of a village which is stricken by a guilty secret. She puts to rest her beloved and comes to terms with many unresolved issues of her personal life as she uncovers the web of mystery surrounding an English Village. This is a deeply complex plot with many surprises and it also shares the difficulties of everyday life in that time period.
All Maisie Dobbs fans will enjoy this story immensely. It is well written and keeps you guessing till the very conclusion of the story. It also leaves wide a new path for Maisie which could go in many different directions in future stories we all anticipate with great expectations.
Jacqueline Winspear has brought freshness to the detective genre, much as Dorothy L Sayers did in her time. The stories and characters have great depth, as the characters continue to grow with sigificance in each story. I look forward to reading many more adventures in the future!
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4.0étoiles sur 5
A Lovely Cozy Mystery, Avril 24 2008
When my local library received the latest in the this series - An Incomplete Revenge - in audio format, I decided to borrow it to listen in the car. I'm quite glad I did as it made such a difference to listen to it. The characters came alive. The reader had a wonderful English accent that set the tone and location for this book.
Maisie Dobbs is a psychologist and investigator. All the novels take place in England in the late 1920's. Maisie is asked to investigate a small village for a company hoping to purchase the local brick works. They are concerned about a series of fires and small thefts that have been occurring.
It is hop picking season in the village, so her assistant Billy and his family are also in the village to work, as are a band of gypsies. The villagers do not report the fires and just gloss over them. They are very reticent about some of the history of the village and do not like the gypsies. With patient questioning Maisie unravels the mysteries surrounding this tiny enclave.
The descriptions of society at this time are fascinating. If you're looking for a good cozy mystery, this might be for you.
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4.0étoiles sur 5
"So alone in her flat, Maisie Dobbs danced", Mars 1 2008
In An Incomplete Revenge the plucky and inimitable Maisie Dobbs, a woman of no certain substance, returns to solve a series of petty crimes and inexplicable fires that have been plaguing the quaint town of Heronsdene in rural Kent. Maisie's investigation begins in London when she meets the dashing James Compton, head of the wealthy and lucrative Compton Corporation who informs her there's some "funny business" going on down at the Sandermere Estate.
The Compton Corporation wishes to place a purchase offer on the estate, but James is hearing doubts about the landowner, a man called Alfred Sandermere, the younger son of Lord Sandermere, who became heir to the estate when his older brother Henry was killed in the Great War. Apparently, Alfred has done nothing but draw funds from the estate, leaving it on the verge of bankruptcy. "It's essentially a fire sale," James tells Maisie, and there's nothing more than the Compton Corporation likes than "a clean transaction."
For sure the petty crime and vandalism in the house, and at the accompanying brickworks, are in danger of jeopardizing the sale. Even stranger is that all of the local villagers are keeping quiet about it with no one especially hurrying to point a finger. Trusted with the job of looking into matters to find out if there's anything amiss locally that would affect James' purchase of the Sandermere estate, Maisie travels to Heronsdene with her faithful cockney assistant Billy Beale whom she entrusts to do much of the initial legwork.
A center for the summer season of hop picking, Heronsdene, however, proves to anything but bucolic for Maisie, the initial drive through the village causing her to shiver with the hair on her back bristling with uncertainty. Soon enough, her fears are confirmed, and she soon develops a portrait of an area that is filled with a bitter dissent between James Sandermere, the local villagers, the incoming workers from London, and the gypsies who have come for the hop-picking season while they live in their whitewashed hopper huts on the edges of the estate.
Billy soon discovers that the locals are pretty quick to blame these gypsies for all the manner of ills that have plagued this community and even when he befriends Beulah Webb, the gypsy matriarch, he finds that "death is walking among the townsfolk of Heron," and there's nothing that Beulah or anyone else for that matter can do "to prevent such a fate."
When Maisie and Billy learn that two young London boys have recently been arrested, apparently for stealing from the Sandermere Estate, the case seems to be a forgone conclusion. But are the boys really guilty of breaking and entering? And if they are, how is the crime linked to the other events described to her by James Compton? And what of Heronsdene, with its constant dour mood, where the village folk are so tight-knit that they fail to report damage to their property by fire?
Soon Maisie finds herself caught up in a race against time to locate the stolen goods and find out who might have conducted the burglaries and the fires in the first place. But she also wonders about this commission from James Compton, the case made even more puzzling as James's mother, the Lady Rowan Compton is the original supporter and sponsor of Maisie's education and had initially suggested that her son contact Maisie regarding the latest purchase of the Sandermere land.
Author Jacqueline Winspear embeds her vividly rendered depression era story with a veritable witches brew of half-truths that have been hidden from view since the end of the Great War, with the townsfolk of Heronsdene constantly haunted and looking over their shoulders waiting for the ghosts to see them in the form of the three members of the Martin family, apparently killed in a sudden zeppelin raid in 1916. It is this event as much as the loss of the town's young men to the War that seems to have been a catalyst for a change of heart.
Even the chills of prejudice and the scars of battle can't escape the fiercely independent Maisie who in the course of the story must come to terms with her gypsy ancestry while also grappling with the tragic circumstances of her beloved beau Simon, whom she eternally holds within her heart, the wounds from the Great War taking his mind. She even worries about her dear father Frankie, who even after twenty-one years still mourns his wife, the ache of loneliness for her company perpetually reflected in his eyes.
With the clues eventually hanging on the origin of a rare violin, the surprising Dutch ancestry of the Martin family, and the insufferable Sandermere, who holds enormous power over the community and may even be embezzling his insurance company, the events of the novel twist and turn, time and again moving from London to Kent and then back to London as the path is eventually cleared for absolution by the villagers.
The author beautifully entrenches Maisie, and indeed all of her other characters, within the haunting the landscapes of 1931. Even with the labor lines growing, the factories closing, and the country in the grip of despair from the Great Depression, forgiveness seems to shine as Maisie's genuine optimism and hope provides the necessary elixir for all of the wounded souls she that encounters throughout the course of her investigation. Copyright Michael Leonard 2008.
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