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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Jun 2004, 360 pages
Paperback:
Aug 2005, 320 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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Maisie is as intelligent and engaging a sleuth as one might desire: the period touches, from clothing to manners, are not only elegantly presented but unostentatious.
Maisie Dobbs is back and this time she has been hired to find a wealthy grocery magnate's daughter who has fled from home. What seems a simple case at first becomes complicated when Maisie learns of the recent violent deaths of three of the heiress's old friends. Is there a connection between her mysterious disappearance and the murders? Who would kill such charming young women? As Maisie investigates, she discovers that the answers to all her questions lie in the unforgettable agony of The Great War.
Maisie parked outside the main gates leading to a red-brick neo-Georgian mansion that stood majestically in the landscaped grounds beyond an ornate wrought iron gate.
"D'you reckon someone'll come to open the gate?" asked Billy.
"Someone's coming now." Maisie pointed to a young man wearing plus fours, a tweed hacking jacket, woolen shirt and spruce green tie. He hurriedly opened an umbrella as he ran toward the entrance, and nodded to Maisie as he unlatched the gates and opened them. Maisie drove the car forward, stopping alongside the man.
"You must be Miss Dobbs, to see Mr. Waite at three o'clock."
"Yes, that's me."
"And your companion is . . . ?" The man bent forward to look at Billy in the passenger seat.
"My assistant, Mr. William Beale."
Billy was still dabbing his nose with Maisie's handkerchief.
"Right you are, M'um. Park in front of the main door please, and make sure you reverse into place, M'um, with the nose of your ...
It's the late 1920s and Maisie has set herself up as a 'Psychologist and Investigator' (according to her brass nameplate). She's been employed to find the only daughter of a wealthy and self-made businessman, so she sets out to find out as much as she can about the girl, including who her friends are - but the friends are all dead - recently dead, having been poisoned and bayoneted, and at each murder is a small, white feather. Readers familiar with the period may well have figured out much of the case ahead of Maisie but that's not really the point as the journey with Maisie is so enjoyable and absorbing...continued
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Jacqueline Winspear was
born and raised in England. She emigrated to
the United States in 1990, and while working
in business and as a personal/professional
coach, embarked upon a life-long dream to be
a writer.
All three of her books to date, Maisie
Dobbs, Birds of a Feather and
Pardonable Lies (to be published in
August) are set in the late 1920’s and early
1930’s, with the roots of each story tracing
back to the 'Great War', 1914-1918.
Winspear's grandfather was severely ...
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