The American Agent by Jacqueline Winspear

The American Agent: A Maisie Dobbs Novel by Jacqueline Winspear --- 365 pages including Acknowledgements and About the Author.

The American Agent by Jacqueline Winspear is the 15th book in the Maisie Dobbs series. In the early weeks of the Second World War, Maisie must investigate a politically sensitive murder while volunteering as an ambulance driver during the London Blitz along with her good friend Priscilla Partridge. At the same time she is anxiously waiting the hearing that will determine whether she is allowed to adopt the orphaned Anna, a traumatized young evacuee who has lost all of her own family. As part of the murder investigation, Maisie must work with an agent of the Department of Justice on special assignment undercover  at the American Embassy in London, Mark Scott. Maisie has met Scott before, when she rescued a British national from Nazi Germany. Maisie is ambivalent about Scott and unsure whether he feels anything in return or is just using her to get his job done.  Another fine historical mystery from Winspear.

Click HERE to read the * review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to read the review from the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Click HERE to read the review from Criminal Element.com.    

In This Grave Hour by Jacqueline Winspear

In This Grave Hour: A Maisie Dobbs Novel by Jacqueline Winspear --- 333 pages

In the thirteenth entry in this mystery series, the world is once again on the threshold of another "Great War," the second such in the lives of Maisie and her compatriots, who still bear the scars of the first on their bodies and minds.

Maisie has re-established her business as a psychologist and investigator, joining forces once again with her colleagues Billy and Sandra. She has also been drawn back into her relationship with Priscilla Partridge, a friend since college days, and Priscilla's husband and three sons, who consider Maisie their aunt. Maisie and Priscilla were nurses during World War I; Douglas Partridge lost an arm in that war, and all three of Priscilla's beloved brothers were killed in action.

Now the whole nightmare looms again, as Maisie is reluctantly recruited by the British Secret Service to look into the troubling death of a Belgian refugee from the last war, who stayed on in Britain, married an English woman, and raised a family.  Frederick Addens was found dead near his workplace just after picking up his pay packet, and Scotland Yard has written off the case as a robbery gone bad. But evidence at the scene suggests Addens was on his knees when he was shot execution style, in the back of the head.

Francesca Thomas, one of Maisie's contacts with the Secret Service, was herself a Belgian Resistance leader in the last war, and knew Addens as a boy, when he first arrived with other refugees. She's not satisfied with Scotland Yard's explanation, and wants Maisie to look further into the matter.

Maisie agrees to take the case, but suspects Thomas is not telling her everything she knows. As she begins her investigation, she uncovers other execution-style murders. The victims are all either former Belgian refugees or people who worked to resettle Belgian refugees.

Another fine historical mystery from Jacqueline Winspear that brings the past convincingly to life.

Click HERE for a review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE for a review from Kirkus.

Click HERE for a review from the New York Times Book Review.

Click HERE for a review from the New York Journal of Books.

Journey to Munich by Jacqueline Winspear

Journey to Munich: A Maisie Dobbs Novel by Jacqueline Winspear --- 285 pages

The 12th book in Winspear's mystery series featuring Maisie Dobbs.  This new book follows hard on the heels of its predecessor, A Dangerous Place (2015). In her long journey to come to terms with the grief of losing her husband and unborn child, Maisie has at last returned to England after a brief sojourn in Gibralter where she became involved in the Spanish Civil War, and spent time nursing wounded partisans.

Taking temporary refuge with her friend Priscilla and Priscilla's family in London, Maisie is trying to figure out what she is going to do with the rest of her life, when she is recruited by old acquaintances in the British Secret Service for a special undercover mission into Nazi Germany on the eve of the Anschluss in 1938. A wealthy businessman, Leon Donat, has been arrested and imprisoned in Dachau (already infamous), accused of being involved in the production of an underground newspaper opposed to the Nazi regime. Unbeknownst to Hitler and his henchmen, Donat is also a boffin --- a brilliant inventor --- and the British are desperate to get him back before the Germans realize the prize they are holding. After intensive negotiations and a substantial bribe from the British government, the SS have agreed to release Donat --- but will only do so if a family member comes to Munich to claim him. Donat's only surviving family is his daughter Edwina, and she is terminally ill. The Secret Service want Maisie to impersonate Edwina, travel to Munich, obtain Donat’s release, and bring him home.

Unfortunately even before Maisie can leave for Germany, this dangerous but straightforward assignment becomes seriously compromised,

The series began with Maisie as a young woman, volunteering to put her life on hold to go out to France as a nurse during World War I.  It continued through the social, economic and political upheavals  of the 1920s and 1930s as Maisie worked to establish herself in her chosen profession as a psychologist and private investigator. Now as the world seems headed into the darkness and destruction of yet another war, Maisie searches to find a new purpose for herself.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Review.

Click HERE to read the review from USA Today.

Leaving Everything Most Loved by Jacqueline Winspear

Leaving Everything Most Loved: A Maisie Dobbs Novel ---339 pages

In 1933, two months after a murdered Indian woman named Usha Pramal was found dumped in the Grand Surrey Canal in Camberwell, the victim's anguished brother arrives in London and retains Maisie Dobbs to investigate the death, since Scotland Yard has made no progress in solving the murder.  Indeed, it appears to Maisie that the police have conducted only the most cursory investigation at all.

But when Maisie begins to look into the matter a second woman --- another Indian woman staying in the same hostel who was friends with Usha --- is murdered in the same way just hours before she was due to meet with Maisie and reveal what she knew about Usha's activities and acquaintances in the weeks before her death.

As part of her investigation Maisie finds herself talking to other Indian immigrants living in London, and becomes more and more attracted to the history, culture and spirituality of India. All of the success she has achieved, the place she has made for herself, and the relationships she has established, though satisfying are not enough any more. She has a hunger to see more, to learn and to stretch herself in new and different directions. And so, as she pursues her case she also pursues an important decision: is it time to leave behind everything she most loves --- to break her heart so that she can open herself to new experiences and possibilities?