Maisie Dobbs mysteries

One of Nancy's friends recommended Jacqueline Winspear's series of four mystery novels featuring Maisie Dobbs as the primary character. Nancy got one from the Northfield Library and read it. Then she went back for the other three.

That, along with little comments from Nancy as she read the books, led me to pick up one of them on a quiet evening. I ended up reading two of the four: Pardonable Lies and Messenger of Truth.

Winspear invents commendably complex plots, but tells the stories in a plodding, detail-filled way. So, you should ask, "Why did you read all the way through two books?"

I read on because of the marvelous mood and setting that Winspear has created. The setting is London in 1930. Maisie Dobbs was a near frontline nurse in France during World War I (like Nancy's grandmother; that was a bit of a hook for Nancy). After the war, Maisie studied what we'd call forensic psychology and learned meditation from two important mentors. She worked as an investigative assistant for one of those men.

The war left Maisie's fiancee in a shell shocked catatonic stupor that we'd call extreme post traumatic stress disorder today. She "knew" that the world was dead to him, but her affections for the man he once was had persisted.

Maisie was a bit shell shocked herself by her wartime experiences and had a breakdown a decade after the war. As part of her recovery, she was casting off from her mentors, buying her own apartment, and establishing her own investigative consulting business. The depression is beginning to have terrible effects, but there were still people with money to hire others to find the graves of soldiers lost in The Great War or determine whether a brother's death had really been an accident.

Winspear's descriptions of London, southern England, and northern France are replete with details that drew me in as completely as any BBC Mystery movie. (And I would not be surprised to find these books translated into BBC films in the near future.)

The details are all there and Winspear does it all with words: from the dreadful fall London smogs that surrounded everyone as people lit their fires for warmth to shifting the claret red 1930 MG that Maisie drove; from the details about the death of a toddler from diphtheria to those about the clothing of an American who wanted to fit into London high society to those about an artist's retreat created from old railway carriages on a desolate beach in Dungeness.

I dabbled enough in archaeology to be fascinated by material culture and the understandings that come from studying artifacts and the details of their arrangements. Winspear is fascinated too. Plus, she adds sociological insights about post-World War I Britain, that, for example, offered more opportunities for women than Victorian England had.

Winspear grew up in London and Kent, but she's certainly not old enough to remember the late 1920s-early '30s. I suppose if you looked carefully, you could still find a 1930 MG or a coin-operated gas meter to describe, but she wrote these books after moving to the USA. She gives thanks in her books to her "Cheef Resurcher (who knows who he is)" who helps recreate Maisie Dobb's world. I'd say his role is vital.

These books are time travel experiences. There are plots and story lines, but they're almost unnecessary for me. On another dreary, cool afternoon like this one, I'll be tempted to sit down with another of Winspear's books and safely travel back to the London of 75-80 years ago. If it sounds like a tempting. trip, check your library or local bookstore for a copy of one of Jacqueline Winspear's books.

(And if you are curious about the strange and lonely beach at Dungeness, use the satellite photos at Yahoo or Google maps to look it up. It's an amazing sight.)

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• Jacqueline Winspear's web site
  
  
• A reading guide for Messenger of Truth from the publisher, Henry Holt and Company
  
  
• Sandy Mitchell's review of Messenger of Truth from Suite 101
  
  
• Warren Kelly's review of Messenger of Truth from Blogcritics.com
  
  
• Shannon McKenna's review of Pardonable Lies at Book Reporter
  
  
• The first chapter of Pardonable Lies at January Magazine
  
  
• Norma J. Shattuck's review of Pardonable Lies from Curled Up With A Good Book

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Detail-filled pictures of an era

Dan Conrad mentioned Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs mysteries here and the next thing I know, Nancy has brought home two of them from the library. What was I to do but read them before they had to be returned (one of them all the way to La Crescent, Minnesota).

The first book was last year's An Incomplete Revenge. One of Maisie's patrons, James Compton, hires her to do some background investigation in preparation for a major corporate purchase. There's a factory he wants to buy, but it's part of a huge estate. He has lived in Canada for a number of years and is no longer very familiar with the estate.

Maisie, many Londoners, and some gypsies are in the area for hops picking season. And there are many local oddities that can't easily be understood by outsiders. But there's due diligence to be done. And hops to be picked. And, of course, mysteries to be solved. The mysteries and the plot revolve around recovery from the traumas (personal and public) of World War I. The characters and the stories add human details to one of my grad school topics. I probably would have been more interested 40 years ago if I'd had personal responses like these.

What really sets Winspear's books apart are the images she creates of England in the 1930s. She describes in detail what people wear, what buildings look like, how rooms are decorated, and the colors of the landscape. All that description could get tedious (and when I tried to listen to a recorded book while driving, it did get tedious).

But I appreciate the detail when I'm reading. The pictures in my mind are much more detailed than they are when I read most other books. As I've said before, Winspear and her "cannot be named 'Cheef Resurcher'" must do incredible background research into fashion, decorating, architecture, automobiles, roads, agriculture, demography, and urban landscapes. (My only complaint is that Maisie's MG is so reliable that the car must be fictional.)

The second book is Among the Mad. Maisie gets "seconded" to a Scotland Yard investigation of threats to London and His Majesty's government. Military intelligence also is involved. While Scotland Yard is chasing after political radicals of many stripes and the military spooks are looking for alien agents, Maisie is focused on war veterans who have been misused and forgotten by society.

What we'd call post-traumatic stress is part of all Winspear's stories. Maisie is a recovering victim (she was a front line nurse in France during the war and was wounded). But the effects of PTSD and the morality of weapons development are central to this story and to an important sub-plot. And Winspear seems to be setting the stage for explaining how PTSD helped create the enviornent for World War II.

Thanks to Dan and Nancy for reminding me about Jacqueline Winspear and her Maisie Dobbs stories and for putting them in my hands. I enjoyed reading them.

See Winspear in the blog index for other reactions to her books.

So, if you've read any of them, tell us what you think. There's a comment link below and you can send me your thoughts and, with your permission, I'll add them here.

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• Jacqueline Winspear's web site
  
  
• Biography and interview of Jacqueline Winspear at Book Reporter
  
  
• Debra Hamel's review of An Incomplete Revenge
  
  
• Joe Meyer's review of Among the Mad

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Romance

I've read several of Jacqueline Winspear's novels and really liked the atmosphere she creates. The novels are set in London during the early 1930s with World War I and the depression important for context. Well, not the depression so much, but the post-war experience of Winspear's main character, Maisie Dobbs, is vital. There are regular references to the depression, but Dobbs and her assistant are mostly observers. Dobbs is a private investigator and people wealthy enough to hire her haven't been hurt by the economic disaster very much. So, Maisy Dobbs and Billy Beale are gainfully employed.

It's Winspear's use of language and attention to detail that create the atmosphere of the 1930s. I can't swear that it's the 1930s atmosphere she creates, but it's definitely not a late 20th or early 21st century atmosphere. Words, phrases, and bits of material culture all contribute to a sense of another time. A romantic re-imagining of a time long past. (Maisie would have been about the same age as my grandparents.)

One of the reasons I have kept coming back to read more of Winspear's books is that they haven't strayed into romance novel territory. The stories focus on a mystery and the steps Maisie and Billy take to uncover the hidden facts. Maisie is a young, single woman and you might expect romance to be in the cards. But Winspear has created a woman who was a front-line nurse in France during World War I. She returned with traumatic stresses. The young doctor she loved and served with also came back from the war, but he was damaged much more severely. A head injury left him an invalid in a hospital for a dozen years after the war. Romance was on hold for Maisie.

But, a book or so ago, the injured doctor died. Maisie had a date or two and a serious suitor whom she turned down. In this book, The Mapping of Love and Death, romance blossoms.

But the romance is not just about Maisie and a new suitor or idealized memories of another time. Maisie is trying to find out what happened to a young American, a volunteer in the British forces during the war who went missing. In 1932, his body was found in France and, with it, a packet of love letters from an unnamed British nurse. The American parents want to identify the woman and learn more about their son's last days. (Of course it's more complicated than that because the post-mortem on the soldier's skeleton suggests he was murdered.) But there's the soldier's romance from 1915. There's a romantic image of a beautiful valley in California that the soldier visited before the war. There's an obvious romance still going on between the grieving American parents. There's are filial relationships between Maisie and her father and between Maisie and her dying mentor. And more. There is romance of one kind or another throughout the book. So, when Maisie is approached by a new suitor and she accepts his suit, it's not out of place. It does make me wonder how Maisie will continue her career if she marries into a proper upper-class family in London of the mid-1930s. Charity work, maybe. But investigative work for paying clients? I think not. The post-war, depression years were ones of great opportunity for women in Britain, but there were some things that proper women just didn't do.

In any case, in spite of all the romance and romance novel-like attributes in this book, I enjoyed it. It was a little day dream away from the fall of 2010 to an idealized time in early 20th century London. The characters are attractive. The story telling is well done and sometimes compelling. The most unbelievable thing is that Maisie's 1930 MG doesn't break down -- ever. The reputation those cars had doesn't support such reliability. Ah, escapism. Sometimes it's just the thing.

Have you escaped into a romantic past? How'd it go for you? Have you escaped into Jacqueline Winspear's London of 75+ years ago? What did you think of it? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you think.

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Jacqueline Winspear's web site
Jacqueline Winspear talks about the book

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Recorded Maisie Dobbs mystery

A couple weeks ago, I was headed up to the little cabin called Sidetrack for some end of season work. I stopped by the library and checked out the audiobook for Birds of a Feather, a Maisie Dobbs mystery by Jacqueline Winspear.

Back in August I'd read a couple of Winspear's books and was engrossed in the recreation of 1930 London. I said at that time that Winspear "tells the stories in a plodding, detail-filled way," but the enchanting detail of life over 70 years ago made up for the mundane story telling.

Well, the drives to Sidetrack and back only got me through the first 4 of the 9 CDs in the novel. So, when Nancy and I went back the following weekend to finish closing up the cabin for winter, I listened to the CDs between yard work, window washing, vacuuming, and napping.

The story was interesting. The murders of 3 women who had been friends in a Swiss bording school is central. There are about as many suspects as victims. Winspear does a good job of laying out the clues and allowing red herrings to distract me.

The reading is very well done by Kim Hicks, a radio, stage, and screen actress who personalizes the voices without histrionics.

However, the "plodding, detail-filled" writing is deadly when read. When I was reading, I could easily skip over the fashions of the women characters. But as a listener, it was hard to ignore things without missing something at the beginning of the next paragraph. I also think some things stood out more when recited than when silently read. Maisie Dobbs finally got to the convent where one of the characters was hiding, but I think it was a CD and a half after I'd figured out that's where the missing person was.

I wish I'd read the book. I might go back and read another of Winspear's mysteries. Then I'll be in control of which details to attend to.

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• Jacqueline Winspear's web site for Birds of a Feather
• A review by Karen Meek at Over My Dead Body
• Joy Calderwood's review at Reviewer's Choice

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Once again, Maisie Dobbs

The last couple times I read a Maisie Dobbs novel by Jacqueline Winspear, I almost despaired of reading another really good one. One of the books I read was more a romance novel than a mystery. The other, unexpectedly, neglected lots of detail and reality. It's been a year, and I was tempted by nostalgia and picked up Elegy for Eddie from the new books shelf at the library.

I'm glad I did.

There is a noticeable lack of historical detail in this new book compared to the earlier ones. Maybe that's because the author has moved from London to Los Angeles. But, it might just seem that way because the coin-operated gas fire places and 1930's fashions are no longer such novelties to me. However, I complained about the reliability of Maisie Dobbs' 1930 MG. The reputation of those cars is/was that they practically required a ride-along mechanic or a driver skilled in small repairs. But until this book, Maisie never experienced a break down. This time the car broke down while parked behind the city home of her lover, who had to call in a mechanic to get it running again.

I really was unhappy with the romance of The Mapping of Love and Death. Well, this time Maisie's romantic relationship is still around, but Maisie is obviously doing some inner work to come to terms with her desires for independence, her desires for the man in her life, and the contradictions between her working class background and her elevation to high society. It wasn't just her smarts and skills, but the generosity of her former employer and her late mentor that brought her wealth and position. Part of the work Maisie has to do is figure out how to best use her good fortune to help people around her without becoming a benevolent dictator.

And the story around which this is told fits with Maisie's inner struggles. Working class people and newly rich industrialists are involved. A young man, Eddie, who we might now call an autistic savant dies in what appears to be an industrial accident. However, there are suspicions that the accident might have been part of the factory owner's struggle to keep unions out of his plant. Eddie had a way with horses and the costermoners (fruit and vegetable sellers who made the rounds of London neighborhoods) regularly called on him to deal with sickly and unruly horses. Since Maisie's dad was once a constermonger, a local group calls on Maisie to sort out the questions surrounding Eddie's death.

Ah, but the resistance to unionization might not be the real intrigue. Eddie, the savant, was also able to sketch things in great detail from seemingly casual glances. (See the story about Stephen Wiltshire.) What did Eddie see? And was all this connected to the death of a crusading journalist who bought Eddie drinks once in awhile? And why did the bully who was suspected in Eddie's death also kill himself? Or did he? And was the reporter's death an accident?

I thought it was a well-written, complex mystery. I also enjoyed the fact that Maisie Dobbs once again had an inner life that was interesting. In earlier books she struggled with PTSD from her years as a front line nurse in France. Now, she was working through more fortunate, but still difficult, changes in her life.

I'm glad I didn't let my disappointments of a couple earlier novels discourage me. If you're looking to begin reading about Maisie Dobbs, I do recommend starting with the earlier books. And you have my permission to skip the couple that preceeded Elegy for Eddie. (See the Wikipedia entry for Jacqueline Winspear to see the books and publications dates.)

Have you read Elegy for Eddie or another of Winspear's books? How did you react?

 Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought.

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• The author's web site
• Anonymous review at How Mysterious!
• Lesa's review at Lesa's Book Critiques

Jacqueline Winspear, speaks at Politics & Prose
Bookstore about Elegy for Eddie and writing

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Reading a Nook

Reading a novel on a Nook (or another tablet-type appliance) is not like reading a book. I haven't figured out the dimensions of difference, but, I'm not as satisfied after finishing the newest Maisie Dobbs mystery, Leaving Everything Most Loved on my Nook as I usually am after putting down a book.

Okay, it might be that this mystery is not up to Jacqueline Winspear's par.

The plot, while complicated and multi-cultural is pretty thin. It might be that Winspear's protagonist spends a lot of time pondering her place in the universe. All that time spent in self-analysis is probably one of the reasons she didn't nab the perp sooner than she did.

The book was also the beginning of a transition for Maisie Dobbs, who, at the end of the book closes her investigative business, farms out her two employees, marries off her widower father, puts off her fiancee-wanna-be, and boards a ship for India. (No word about what happened to the cute little MG she tooled around in.)

It could also be that so much of the cultural details from 1920's England seems missing from this story. That stuff made Maisie and her world so much richer than many stories. Winspear moved from England to California sometime after starting the Maisie Dobbs series and maybe she's out of touch with details about London buses, telephones, street scenes, and houses.

It could also be that I started reading this book a week or so ago at home and finished on a Saturday afternoon at the cabin called Sidetrack on a lake called Blake. Maybe the story deserves more concentrated attention.

Two immigrant women from India, roommates in a sort of shelter, are murdered in London. The brother of one of the women arrives in London and hires Maisie to help find the murderer. There are suspicious missionary types, wild children in a park, gifted healers, mystified London cops, a confessed murderer who seems an unlikely culprit, and Maisie trying to decide what her place is in the universe.

It just didn't seem, when I finished it, to be a great reading experience. Was it because of the Nook or something else? I really did miss the paper and turning pages with more than a tap on the right edge of the screen.

I don't know. Right now I want to return to concentrating on the loon who is calling on the lake. What do those calls mean?

Have you read Leaving Everything Most Loved? Have you read a book on a tablet? What did you think? Write. Tell this little bit of the world what you thought.

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• The author's web site
• Kathleen Hennrikus' review at the New York Journal of Books
• Marina Maxwell's review at the Historical Novel Society web page
• Melissa's review at Swamp of Boredom

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Back to post-war Britain

I finished a professional project and gave myself leave to escape with a mystery by Charles Todd (actually a mother-son writing team), an author(s?) recommended by Dan Conrad.

The story is set in post-World War I Britain (like Jacqueline Winspear's "Maisie Dobbs" stories and most of Laurie R. King's "Mary Russell" stories).

A local patrician is killed while out riding one morning. No witnesses. Exact scene unknown. The body was found in a pasture some time after the murder. A local investigation seems to indicate that a famous, well-connected local war hero is the murderer. So, the locals send for help from Scotland Yard. Enter Inspector Ian Rutledge.

In the book, A Test of Wills, Ian Rutledge, like Maisie Dobbs, suffers from shell shock (PTSS). His condition is worse than Maisie Dobbs' but not as bad as Maisie's one-time fiance, who is confined to a hospital and unable to speak or care for himself. (The story is also set about a decade earlier than the Maisie Dobbs stories.) Rutledge is haunted by a soldier who mutineed at the front and whom Rutledge killed for his betrayal. The voice of the dead man is part of Rutledge's everyday life. Dark depression waits on the edges of his consciousness to take over.

The post-war period in Western Europe was traumatic for nearly everyone. For Rutledge it meant trying to return to a career that he was quite good at before 1914. A Test of Wills tells the story of his first investigation after the war and after treatment (therapy?) for his shell shock. The scene is rural Warwickshire (northwest of Buckingham -- Stratford upon Avon is in the south of the county). [Coincidence noted below.]

Rutledge's investigation seems to reach the same conclusions as the local one did, but he can't tie up all the loose ends. The voice in his head taunts him. People tell him only what they think is relevant. He keeps probing to find out what they are keeping from him. Of course, he's relentless. The voice in his head and the dark cloud at the edge of his being won't allow anything less. Eventually, he sorts out the details, finds the murderer, and returns to London with his pre-war reputation intact.

The book suffers a bit by comparison to Laurie R. King and Jacqueline Winspear. The story is not as crisply told as King's stories are. But, A Test of Wills is "Charles Todd's" first book. Dan Conrad read a later one and really liked it. I'll read another, but it's more opaque than King's stories. [Remember that teacher in high school or at the university who made it seem that there were secrets and priorities that he/she knew but that she/he wasn't going to explain? I remember several like that. I never could figure out what was most important and what would be on the exam. So I tried to learn everything. Well, this story is told like that. There are scores of details. And the crucial ones aren't revealed until the very end (the exam?). I was disappointed in the resolution as I often was with my grades on those less-than-transparent exams.]

Also, I got less of that feeling of verisimilitude that pervades the Maisie Dobbs stories. I think it has to do with a level of detail in Winspear's books. Ian Rutledge has a car that he uses to get around Upper Streetham, but unlike Maisie's little red MG, I never found out what kind of car it was, how he started it, or how he called the local blacksmith to tow it into town to fix a slashed tire.

I was disappointed in the resolution, but the story telling was satisfying and involving. It was a good book to read while relaxing after the completion of a big deal project. This is the first of an 11-book series, I learned from Wikipedia. From another source I learned that the authors, named as Caroline and Charles Todd, might be using pseudonyms and do not actually live in Delaware, where the publisher says they come from. Another source suggested that the son in this writing team might hold a sensitive position which would suffer from being identified as a mystery writer. Who knows?

Do you know? Have you read A Test of Wills or another of "Charles Todd's" books? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you think.

Oh, and coincidence. A couple days before reading this book, I was researching Warwickshire census records. My dad had searched diligently for ancestors named Wedding in England and never found any. There are many circumstantial clues from colonial Maryland, but no evidence of an English origin for the most senior John Wedding we know of, who died in 1772. Many records are now online in the UK, and I found several families named Wedding living in Warwickshire in the mid-19th century. Older records are not online. Maybe it's time for my research trip to England.

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• Charles Todd's web site
• The publisher's Charles Todd web page
• An interview with "Charles Todd" in January magazine
• Austrailian Kerrie's review of A Test of Wills

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Dan Conrad on Jacqueline Winspear

Dan wrote and I thought his comments deserved a couple posts rather than just a Comment on the blog entry.

My reaction to A Lesson In Secrets [Winspear's previous book] was that Jacqueline Winspear had finally run out of things for Maisie Dobbs to do that would last longer than a short story and filled in the rest with countless side stories that were neither very interesting nor in any way relevant to the main plot.

I wouldn't blame Sidetrack [the cabin] for making you doze off. You suggest the story lines are put in to be taken up in later novels. I hope not. When an author begins to write more about the personal lives of the characters -- main and otherwise -- than they do about the core story line I fear they are "running dry"on that series and should move on to something/someone else. Or quit trying to market the books as "mysteries."

Like The Help is, I think, a really great book to read with no mystery in there to move it along, just fascinating characters with interesting stories to tell.

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It's Maisie again

I went back to the library, "to read" list in hand, but Ididn't really need it this time.

On the cart of recently returned books by the front desk was Jacqueline Winspear's A Lesson in Secrets. I don't know how Dan Conrad's request for this book from the Minneapolis Public Library is working its way up the waiting list, but Northfield's copy was just sitting on the cart waiting for me. I picked it up, checked it out, and never got 20 feet from the entrance. It was a satisfying and efficient trip to the library.

Sir Oswald Moseley, infamous for leading the British Union Of Fascists before
the second world war, figures indirectly in this story.

Reading A Lesson in Secrets was not as satisfying or as efficient. The book is once again full of fascinating details about fashion and technology of everyday life in London of 1932. There is a theme concerning the Crown's secret intelligence bureau and its focus on Bosheviks in Cambridge's colleges, while ignoring the growing influence of fascists and Nazis on campus. There's also a story about organized crime and a protection racket in London. In fact, there are many stories in this book. Too many by my lights.

Because there are so many stories here, none of them (not even the primary one) really get told well. There's the young widow that Maisie takes under her wing. There's Maisie's assistant Billy and his family. There's a story about Maisie's father, a widower for 20 years, and his new "girlfriend." There's Maisie's romance. And then there's Maisie's undercover job for Crown. Oh, and you might add that there's a story of Maisie's cover as a philosophy lecturer in a Cambridge college. (She's supposed to report on anything untoward she finds on campus.) There's also some of Maisie's reminiscences about her own student days in Cambridge. Well, you see the problem: how to tell all those stories in 321 pages. Winspear tries to do that and ends with, "Yes, time would give up her secrets. She just had to wait." Not great.

Those last lines affirm what I felt throughout the book. These are transitional stories. Most of them lead to future stories. The young widow, like Maisie, makes her way in the world. Billy and his family have a new baby and a brand new house with "an indoor lav." Maisie's father finds a boon companion for retirement. Maisie and her titled lover, in a romance novel, sort out how to merge their strong individual lives and compromise with the expectations of post-Victorian English high society. Maisie finds such satisfaction in teaching philosophy that she turns her detective agency over to Billy and the young widow while she commutes between her lover's London mansion, his family's estate in Kent, and her classrooms in Cambridge. And she probably takes on a few more undercover jobs for the crown while accompanying her lover (husband?) on his business trips around the world.

There are also some things missing. I just can't believe that Maisie's little MG roadster starts everytime she turns the key and it never breaks down or gets a flat tire. (MGs were not modern Toyotas.)

1930 MG like the one Maisie Dobbs drove.

How is it that Maisie and her friends never come in contact with the destitute and unemployed of 1932 England? I'm pretty certain that Winspear did the research, but were developers really building new, semi-detatched homes on the edge of London in '32? And then there's her lover's international business (and another character's global trading company). How was it that these companies were prosperous as the world's economies were falling apart?

So, I wasn't completely satisfied with the book. I wasn't efficient either. I kept falling asleep between chapters yesterday. There's something about being at the cabin called Sidetrack, looking at the lake, and doing bits and pieces of maintenance that are relaxing. And the relaxation led to several naps that interruupted my reading.

Check out A Lesson in Secrets for yourself. Then (or if you've already read it) write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought of it.

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• The author's web site
  
• 353 reviews at GoodReads
  
• a review at Rundpinne
  

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Hurry up!

As I walked into the Northfield library I discovered a new Jacqueline Winspear novel on a table by the staircase. A little note was taped to the cover, "Lucky You!"

It turns out that this was a recent addition to the collection that no one had reserved. I could check it out, but it wasn't renewable. Well, it was due yesterday and this evening I just finished it. I'm glad I spent the time and will gladly pay the fine when I return it tomorrow.

The book is A Dangerous Place. The dangerous place is Gibraltar in 1937.

Maisie Dobbs retreated to the mountains of India after the death of her husband and the loss of the child they had been expecting. She was overwhelmed with grief and could not face returning to England, her father, her in-laws, and all the familiar places she called home.

Finally on the way home, her ship docks in Gibraltar, and Maisie realizes she's not yet ready to face family and familiar. However, on one of her first evenings in Gibraltar, she stumbles on the body of a recently murdered man.

This Dobbs character that Winspear has created cannot resist asking questions about the death and the survivors. Once an investigator, always an investigator, I guess. However, Winspear does a fairly good, but not (to me)  totally convincing job of portraying this as a further attempt by Dobbs to evade confronting the horror of her sorrow.

Gibraltar is a dangerous place because the civil war is going on in Spain and because the isolated city is full of spies and police of all kinds. Some of the police are serving the interests of Dobbs' father-in-law and others are serving ambiguous masters.

Then there are the photographs taken by the man Dobbs found murdered. One of a German submarine and another of a German double agent. Oh, there's also weapons smuggling by some of the fishing fleet. Of course, Maisie Dobbs is close enough to be aware of all of it, though she's at a loss to put all the pieces together -- until the very end, of course.

Then Maisie meets two English nurses who are headed for a front-line nursing station (much like the one Maisie worked at in France in 1916-17). Guess who goes along. After a hectic day at the station and meeting a nun who practically runs the place herself, Maisie tells here police tail she's headed back to England. But instead she heads for the nun's nursing station in Spain. A couple months there working with the wounded, Maisie feels, will get her out of herself enough that she'll be able to return to England.

I don't know. Want to take bets?

Have you read A Dangerous Place? What did you think of it? Write and tell this little bit of the world about your reaction.

Now, I have to take this book back to the library. I was lucky.

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• The author's web site
• Nadia A.'s review at A Bookish Way of Life
• Robert Blanco's review at USA Today
• Renita Last's review at Jewish Book Council
• Bobbi Dumas' review at NPR

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Better late than never?

Once again, I have procrastinated about writing things about books I've read. The books have piled up on my desk and my dresser. Why, oh why?

I have no answer.

Diversion: The last I read of Maisie Dobbs, Jacqueline Winspear's hero, she had closed her private investigator's business and headed for India. It was a good move, because the character and the story lines had become rather stale. In the last two years, Winspear wrote a novel about life during World War I, and has another Maisie Dobbs mystery coming out in July. The new novel is set in Gibraltar, which might help revive the franchise.

Long running series (common to mystery writers) based on one or two primary characters, face the risk of repetition, especially if the characters are portrayed in consistent ways. Louise Penny faced that problem with her Armand Gamache novels set in the tiny village of Three Pines, Quebec. She has dealt with it by changing the status of her main character and having him retire to the little village and do some private sleuthing for one of his new neighbors.

Louise Penny has written a series of books (10 so far) about Quebec Detective Inspector Armand Gamache. Somehow he's investigated nearly a dozen major crimes in the tiny (Lake Wobegon-sized) village of Three Pines. That tiny village not only seemed to be a magnet for crime, but also for an incredible variety of interesting people (equally unlikely events in my experience). But those characteristics are what made Penny's stories so interesting. The new book is The Long Way Home.

In the book that preceded The Long Way Home, the great detective cracked a major corruption case that involved the highest levels of the Quebec police force. Then he retired to the tiny village of Three Pines that he'd come to know so well, thus increasing the variety and number of interesting people in the village.

Painter Clara Morrow's husband Peter, also a painter, went missing. The two of them had had a sort of competition as artists, and Clara had won more fame and fortune. Had Peter ceded the stage to his successful wife, had he gone off in search of a new muse, or had he given up on living? Who better to help locate the missing man than a nearby, retired police inspector? Peter's trail is obscure and convoluted.

The retired DI has to deal with the remnants of an artistic commune from the '60s. Surrounding the ruins of the commune are rumors of murders (bring in the cadaver dogs) and plagiarism (check in with a gallery owner in Montreal). Somehow, Peter was linked to the commune in the past. Was his disappearance linked to a reconnection with its notorious former leader? Oh, yes, asbestos too. Deadly asbestos. And a sad, "O. Henry" ending for the loving couple, Clara and Peter.

Well done, Louise Penny. You found a way to extend the series of Gamache novels.

• The author's web site
• Patrick Anderson's review in The Washington Post
• Marilyn Stasio's review in The New York Times
• Linda Wertheimer's interview with Louise Penny on NPR
• Viv Watts' review in The Express (UK)

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Multiple recommendations

Dan Conrad dropped me an e-mail with an interesting list attached.

I thought you might find this of a tiny bit of interest.

What follows is my "request" list at Hennepin County Library.

The interest, I think, is not what I happen to have on order but as a check of the relative popularity of several books, which we might have a common interest in. Check, for instance, the long list for The Ice Princess. This will be my first Camilla Läckberg book. Have you read anything by her in your perusal of Scandinavian crime fiction? Also, note that Masie Dobbs beats out her "clone" Bess Crawford, 7+ to 1. That seems just.

Anyway, all in all a totally  frivolous FYI. Any here you have on your "to read" radar?

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Title	Author	Position (Place in Line)
Bad Intentions	Fossum, Karin	15 of 45 (on order)
A Bitter Truth: A Bess Crawford Mystery	Todd, Charles	15 of 32 (on order)
The Devotion of Suspect X	Higashino, Keigo	21 of 23
The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens, and the Search for the Good Life	Hughes, Bettany	15 of 32
The Ice Princess	Läckberg, Camilla	463 of 485
A Lesson in Secrets: a Maisie Dobbs novel	Winspear, Jacqueline	17 of 228
Naughty in Nice: a Royal Spyness Mystery	Bowen, Rhys	35 of 112 (on order)
A Red Herring without Mustard: a Flavia de Luce Mystery	Bradley, C. Alan	87 of 92
A Singular Woman: the Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother	Scott, Janny	102 of 136
So Much Pretty: a Novel	Hoffman, Cara	27 of 67
Started Early, Took my Dog: a Novel	Atkinson, Kate	5 of 214

It's going to be awhile until Dan gets to read The Ice Princess. On my mental to-read list are the Maisie Dobbs mystery and Janny Scott's bio of Obama's mother. However, I'll have to investigate the others on this list as well. Except maybe the Soctates book. I might add Socrates to my fairly short list of things I'm unwilling to spend much time on anymore. Go ahead, call me a philistine.

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Dan also wrote with a note that could only come from someone who identifies himself closely with his Swedish immigrant ancestors. But maybe you'll find some recommendations that will fit your reading mood even if you're not Swedish, Swedish-American, or Scandinavian. (I don't think there are any "important" books on this list.)

Two years ago, Dan sent me the same list. That time he'd found it in The Guardian. If you go to that blog entry, "Vem hade kunnat gissa?" you can see links to reviews of the books on the list besides Dan's. If he's read 6 of these books in the past two years, he's made great progress, especially if he's waited for library copies.

"I get a magazine called Swedish Press. In the current issue there is an interview with a current "hot thing" in Swedish crime fiction, Camilla Låckberg (Ice Princess, e.g.--not read it myself, but have it on my library request list, see above). Anyway, they asked her what she thought were the "Top Ten Swedish Crime Novels." Here is her list.

"I put an asterisk by ones I have read and also what I rated it on a scale of 1-5. [Note: I do have a "6" but that's for books I would like to read a second time]. Which have you read?"

1. Mind’s Eye, Håken Nesser (Read his Borkman’s Point and didn’t care for it)
   
2. * Blackwater, Kerstin Ekman (4.5)
   
3. * Missing, Karin Alvtegen (4)
   
4. * Sun Storm, Åsa Larsson (4)
   
5. * The Fifth Woman, Henning Mankell (3)
   
6. * Unseen, Mari Jungstedt (2)
   
7. Shame, Karin Alvtegen
   
8. Echoes from the Dead, Johan Theorin
   
9. * Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Steig Larsson (5)
   
10. Midvinterblod, Mons Kallentoft (Not translated yet)

If you look at the ReadingBlog entry, you'll find that my reaction to Nesser's Borkman's Point was much like Dan's. I read Mari Jungstedt's Unspoken and liked it. I've read all three of Stieg Larsson's books and I liked them all, although The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was the best. Netflix delivered the third Swedish movie based on the books, The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, and we watched it last weekend. It was really good -- maybe as good as the first film. I have no interest in seeing the American versions which are currently in production.

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More cold mystery from Iceland

So, when I returned books to the library, I scanned the "new fiction" shelves as usual. Just in case.

What I found was an oversized paperback of Arnaldur's latest, "Reykjavík Murder Mystery," Hypothermia. (It's a British publication with all the extra vowels.) It was pretty good and the last half was better than the first half.

In fact, I read to about page 60 and then went online to search this blog. Things just seemed very familiar, and I wasn't sure I had hadn't read this book already. But, no, I hadn't read Hypothermia. The main character, the setting (Iceland), the prose, and the pacing all seemed very familiar. In fact, a couple of the "cold cases" in this book were mentioned in earlier books.

When things seem that familiar and the pace of the story telling is a slow march, I have trouble getting enthusiastic about reading. I'd read a chapter and put the book down. The next day, I'd read another chapter. However, things picked up in the last half of the book.

Arnaldur's main character, Erlendur, is off on his own in this story. Things are slow at the Rekjavík cop shop. Erlendur is doing paperwork on a suicide and taking a last look at a couple 30-year old cold cases left over from early in his career. He's motivated, in part, because the father of a young man who went missing without a trace back then is dying.

Of course things get complicated. Details of the suicide don't add up. A guy retires from a career in Denmark and comes home to Iceland. Guess who he used to know. Erlendur is still haunted by the death of his little brother in a blizzard that almost killed both of them. His adult daughter is pushing him and his ex-wife to sit down and talk to each other (something they haven't done for 20 years). There are hints of ghosts and words of mediums.

Nearly all of that is in the second half of the book. And that's worth reading. I don't know how well the second half would stand up without introduction, but I'd guess you could skim the first 120 pages.

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Now, there's the issue of counterparts. Dan Conrad noted that Charles Todd's Bess Crawford character (first created in 2009) is strikingly similar to Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs. The first Maisie Dobbs novel was published in 2003. Both women were nurses during World War I and both are independent women who get involved in solving mysteries in London after the war. I haven't gotten around to reading a Bess Crawford story yet, but here's another pair to draw to.

In 1991, Henning Mankell wrote the first Kurt Wallander novel. The Swedish detective has become incredibly well-known. The eleventh (and last) novel is about to come out. There have been television series produced in Sweden and Britain featuring Wallander. And there's a Swedish movie.

Wallander is a morose and phlegmatic man, whose wife left him and whose daughter worries him (in several senses of that verb). He's a passionate detective whose life is centered on finding the facts and explanations behind awful events. He lives in a neglected apartment and doesn't take care of himself.

Arnaldur's Erlandur first showed up in 1997. He's a morose detective, haunted by his past and anxious to explain tragedies and atrocities he confronts as an Icelandic detective. He abandonded his wife and two children long ago and has no clue about finding closure with those people. He lives in a neglected apartment and doesn't take very good care of himself. Books about Erlandur have been published in 26 countries, but none have been made in to television shows or movies. And Erlandur's putative apartment building is not a tourist destination like Kurt Wallander's.

Oh, and Arnaldur is Icelandic and doesn't use a family name. In the UK and the US, his books list him as Arnaldur Indriðason. I guess you can't be an author in the English-speaking world with only one name unless you were a 19th century short story writer or you've established yourself as a performer.

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• Northern exposure, an interview with Arnaldur by The Guardian's Nicholas Wroe.
  
• Jane Jakeman's review at The Independent
  
• Maxine Clarke's review at Euro Crime
  
• A review at Mysteries in Paradise
  

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The NYT reviewer speaketh

Marilyn Stasio, writing in The New York Times really likes the final Wallander novel by Henning Mankell, but she's not so enthusiastic about Jacqueline Winspear's new Maisie Dobbs mystery.

She does recommend a second Michael Robertson mystery about the brothers Heath, who rent an office for their law firm on London's Baker Street in exchange for answering letters sent to Sherlock Holmes. The first book was The Baker Street Letters. The new one is The Brothers of Baker Street. Hmmm...

Early in the last century

Dan Conrad wrote with another enthusiastic recommendation.

After reading your latest blog, I may be adding to your reading load by suggesting something that could put you even further behind.

I just finished Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd and it is, in my opinion, a terrific book. Its the first in what they promise to be a series of Bess Crawford mysteries.

Actually, I think Jacqueline Winspear could have a copyright case against them as Bess Crawford is so like Masie Dobbs you could switch the names and never suspect the difference: she's a plucky WWI British nurse to start with.

Still it is, if anything, even better. The characters are so interesting I didn't even notice that 90 pages had gone by and there was no real mystery yet, just a highly engaging narrative. But once the mystery starts to unravel, well, don't plan on going to bed early.

I am also wondering if you have read other books by the mother-son team that goes by the name Charles Todd. I see they have a whole series of mysteries featuring Ian Rutledge and am wondering if you are aquainted with those. This is the first I have heard of Charles Todd, but I suspect that's not the case with you.

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First, this is the first I've heard of Charles Todd (whoever they may be).

Second, even if it's merely as good a Masie Dobbs story, it will probably be worth my time.

Third, I found A Carrion Death by Michael Stanley at the Northfield Library and began reading it today while David and I were at the laundromat (five loads for the family this week and doing them simultaneously rather than sequentially was worth a trip to the south edge of town). So far, Gary Sankary is on target: it's an engaging story about an exotic place.

And Michael Stanley, like Charles Todd, is a pseudonym for a pair of writers. One of the pair who make up Michael Stanley has Minnesota connections.

Fourth, I still have Echo Park by Michael Connolly and Voices by Arnaldur Indriðason to write about (and Voices is very good).

Fifth, reading good books at leisure is not a burden ("adding to your reading load"). And, as an old retired guy, I have more leisure than most people and more than I used to have, so recommendations are always welcome. Even if the list grows longer. (I have another Arnaldur Indriðason book on my bedside table already.)

What to do first? What to do first?

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End it already!

I've read several of Charles Todd's mysteries featuring WWI nurse Beth Crawford. She's the one whose stories remind me of the Masie Dobbs stories, and they're as good as the lesser Masie Dobbs' stories.

I picked up another Charles Todd mystery at the library recently, and it made me wonder again about all this writing about the time between World War I and World War II. Todd has set "his" books in that time, as does Jacqueline Winspear. Laurie R. King sets some of her Mary Russell stories in that time frame as well. It doesn't seem -- Gatsby notwithstanding -- a very attractive period in Western history. Maybe it's attractive as a literary setting because it's far enough in the past so there are few people around with first hand experiences, but for which there is good and accessible documentation of the time. (I especially think of the descriptions of material culture in the Masie Dobbs stories.)

In any case, this book was not a Bess Crawford mystery, but an Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery. I read one of these before and liked it, with reservations. Looking back, I have some of the same reservations about Wings of Fire.

Inspector Ian Rutledge is a WWI veteran suffering what we'd now call a severe case of PTSD. It gets in his way, but -- stiff upper lip and all -- he tries to push through and do the investigations he has to do. Interestingly, but less so than the first time around, Rutledge carries a memory that is a constant voice in his head commenting on what's going on. It's sort of like a Greek chorus, but I thought it became tiresome.

I wrote about A Test of Wills (the Rutledge mystery that preceded this one), "Rutledge's investigation seems to reach the same conclusions as the local one did, but he can't tie up all the loose ends. The voice in his head taunts him. People tell him only what they think is relevant. He keeps probing to find out what they are keeping from him. Of course, he's relentless."

Well, I found slight differences in Wings of Fire, but hardly enough to note. It's just a variation on the earlier story.

There's a textbook I'm familiar with in which the first third of the book endeavors to explain theory and concepts before it tackles the subject matter those things apply to. I find it difficult to deal with because I best understand the methodology when it's applied. (I also know that other people want all the abstract stuff organized in their heads before they tackle real-world topics.)

Well, the last third of this book is an extended unwinding of the mystery that only Ian Rutledge (even in his damaged condition) has figured out. Well, one of the murdered people had figured it out, but her letter explaining things wasn't found until after Rutledge had unraveled the mystery. That last third of the book was not much fun for me. I'd figured out what Rutledge had long before he had the climactic meeting with the bad guy. When I read A Test of Wills, I wrote that I was dissatisfied with the resolution. Same here. If another Charles Todd novel falls into my hands, I'll probably begin reading it. I don't know if I'd slog through another resolution like this one.

So, have you read Wings of Fire or another of Charles Todd's novels? What did you think? Write and tell this little bit of the world about your reactions.

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• Charles Todd's home page
• An interview with Caroline and Charles Todd in January Magazine
• Lee Gilmore's review at The Mystery Reader

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First romance, now fantasy

Taking Bird Loomis' advice, I picked up a book by Thomas Perry. And then another and another. I liked them. One of the things I liked was that the characters were new to me in each book. There are times when it's a treat to follow characters through several novels. (See Tony Hillerman, Dana Stabenow, and Jacqueline Winspear.) But the novelty in Perry's books was refreshing.

I did notice in the dust jacket bios, that Perry was identified as the author of the Jane Whitefield novels. I was curious enough to look for one the last time I was in the Northfield library (celebrating the centennial of its Carnegie building). I picked out the oldest Jane Whitefield novel I could find and checked out Dance for the Dead, published in '96.

The book starts out like gangbusters. The first two chapters are great short stories. I was ready to read a series of short stories with little ligaments holding them together into a "novel." Turns out that the rest of the book is woven around those stories to create the novel. There are other short stories, but by the time I got involved in the book, I wasn't looking for them anymore.

This novel, like most of the other Perry novels, is a fantasy. Jane Whitefield is a magician, a superwoman, and smarter than any of the other bears. She's a Seneca woman from western New York who helps people disappear when they need to hide from bad people. It's a dangerous occupation, but she's the expert. Like Sherlock Holmes, she has people who help her in small, but essential ways. She always has enough money and another identity with documentation (even ones she can share with her clients). She always knows people she can go to. They're always home. She always wins the fights. She always is the survivor. No villain that Perry can invent can outwit her for long. She's heartless with the bad guys and motherly with victims. She probably does everything except shepherd people into heaven. The ones she sees out of this world are obviously going elsewhere.

I had to put on hold my desires for believability. There's practically nothing believable in the book. The action scenes are well done and suspenseful, as long as you forget that Jane Whitefield is coming out on top a the end. The plot is simple, but the telling is complex. That may be why I liked reading it.

Have you rad Dance for the Dead? Have you read any of the other Jane Whitefield novels? What did you think of them? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought.

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• Publisher's web site for Thomas Perry's books
  
• An Australian bookworm's thoughts on the Jane Whitefield series of novels
  
• Robert Birnbaum's interview with Thomas Perry at identitytheory.com

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Singing not whistling

When I saw the name Ivan Doig among the new books at the Northfield library, I had good memories of a couple of his books. When I looked them up, it turns out I've read four of his books in the last 3 years. When I checked out Work Song, I had no idea exactly what I was getting into, because while Doig's books tend to be historical fiction, they range widely in that pasture.

It turns out that Work Song is a sequel to the best of the books I read, The Whistling Season.

And, like The Whistling Season, this book is just a story about a few people. It's set in Butte, Montana just after World War I. It turns out that Butte in 1919 was a multi-ethnic city of 100,000. Copper mining was just beginning to wind down. The post-war red scare was in full swing as was union activity. The Golden Age of paternalistic mega-corporations was just past its prime.

Into this scene, the University of Chicago scholar, gambling huckster, wood splitter, and school master from the earlier book, Morris Morgan, appears. He says without offering any details that he spent the decade between the two stories in Tasmania. He's unclear about what drew him back to Montana. The Chicago gamblers, who chased him to the frontier, remember him, and he's promised not to go near the woman with whom he ran from Chicago.

Whatever plans he had are thwarted when the railroad loses his trunk and he arrives in Butte with a stachel of clothes and necessaries. He ends up, luckily for a classically educated big city guy, with a job in the Butte Public Library (he was found reading Caeser in Latin by the classically inclined head librarian). The story revolves around Morris, the landlady of his boarding house, two of his fellow boarders, one of his former students (who is teaching in Butte) and her fiance (a miners' union leader) and the suspicious corporate enforcers trying to identify Wobblies (see IWW).

Like The Whistling Season, this book is about the characters. Unfortunately, the characters in Work Song aren't as well-drawn as the ones I remember from The Whistling Season. But, it has been a bit over two years since I read it. There's a bit of suspense and adventure, but no big events. The times in which the book is set deserved a couple big events. But they're not in the story. The time and place are not evoked as vibrantly as Davis and Winspear drew ancient Rome and 1930s London. But it was a pleasure to read about fairly normal life. No murders. No huge improbabilities. Just some colorful characters bumbling through life like most of us do.

I recommend reading The Whistling Season and Work Song as a pair. Then, I recommend choosing some others of Doig's books and trying them out. Have you read Work Song? Have you read other books by Ivan Doig? What did you think? Write and tell this little bit of the world how you reacted to them.

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• Ivan Doig's web site
  
• Jonathan Yardley's review in The Washington Post
  
• Tim Rutten's review in The Los Angeles Times
  
• Joanna Hershon's review in The New York Times

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A Charles Tood novel and a Maisie Dobbs alert

Dan Conrad wrote from Minneapolis:

I get these "Author Alerts" from the Hennepin County Library when they order books from authors I've specified. This morning I got one announcing the purchase of Lesson in Secrets : A Maisie Dobbs Novel, by Jacqueline Winspear -- so I can pass it on to you and to get the Northfield Libray cracking--if they haven't already ordered it.

On that note, I just finished An Impartial Witness, the second Bess Crawford novel by Charles Todd. It is very nearly as interesting as the first in the series, Duty to the Dead. Of course Bess Crawford is a shameless rip-off of Maisie Dobbs -- but the novels have, I think, their own merits nonetheless: less psychological depth and angst and a bit more sleuthing and more of a "how the hell is she gonna get out of this one" climax.

Thanks for writing, Dan. I'm still hung up on Mark Twain's autobiography and trying (like the despot in Egypt) to find a graceful way out. I skim pages of pitiful prose and then, every once in awhile, run into a remarkable bit (like Twain's elegy to his daughter Susy, who died unexpectedly at age 24 while Twain was in England).

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