Saturday, January 24, 2009

Review: Maisie Dobbs, Jacqueline Winspear

Two weeks ago, I took a stack of books out of the library; now that I'm through most of the them, I thought it would be fun to write short reviews. So, from bottom to top...

Maisie Dobbs is the first in a series of historical mysteries, set in London in the earlyish part of the 20th century. I had great hopes for Maisie. But alas, she's less a woman of her time, and more a 21st century independent working woman with a very contemporary worldview, plunked down in the 30s. Maisie solves the mystery by being empathetic in a creepy new agey way and by making a bunch of phone calls that the reader isn't told about until the final chapter. Much of the book is taken up with Maisie's backstory, particularly her service during WWI as a nurse and her ill-fated romance with a surgeon. An engaging enough book, and it was interesting to think more about what it must have been like to live through WWI. But I don't really like Maisie enough to read any more in this series.

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