Entry 14 in Winspear's excellent historical mystery series that began in 1913, just before the start of World War I, and has now reached the spring of 1940. War has been declared, British troops have landed in France and Belgium, and Hitler's army is advancing.
At home, the British are making feverish preparations to defend themselves against invasion, and experiencing that eerie calm before the storm feeling that nothing much is happening --- yet. The owner of the local pub asks Maisie Dobbs to locate his son Joe, a fifteen-year-old apprentice painter away from home for the first time, working on a big government contract at the new defensive airfields springing up all along the south coast. The painters are covering the buildings at the airfields with a fire-retardant emulsion to protect against German bomb attacks, but something in the paint has been causing Joe to experience sick headaches. And he hasn't called home or written for over a week.
Maisie is glad to help, but soon discovers that although Joe's gone missing none of his workmates have noticed anything amiss. As an increasingly concerned Maisie pursues her inquiry the country is preoccupied with a possible enemy invasion as rumors spread that the British expeditionary force is being pushed back by the advancing Germans and is stranded on the beaches of France.
The British government issues a call for every civilian with a boat to join the British Navy's effort to evacuate the troops now trapped and under vicious aerial attack. In the middle of all of these alarms, Maisie discovers another boy has gone missing, her friend Priscilla's middle son, and Maisie's own godson. Timothy and his friend Gordon have slipped away to take Gordon's father's boat and join the effort to evacuate the troops.
Winspear successfully combines history and mystery in a book that brings home on a personal level the terrible costs of war. The book is based on the wartime experiences of Winspear's own family during World Wars I and II, and dedicated to her father, a World War II veteran.
If you've seen the award-winning 2017 film Dunkirk, written, directed and produced by Christopher Nolan, or enjoyed the Foyle's War series on PBS, this book will appeal.
Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.
Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.
Click HERE to read the starred review from Library Journal.
Click HERE to read a brief interview with the author published in the New York Times.
Click HERE to read the entry on the Evacuation of Dunkirk from Wikipedia.
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