Winspear does a fine job with the ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ aspects of the story, depicting the class tensions that inevitably arise as Dobbs climbs to a new station in life. Winspear takes her through her ordeal with great compassion.’ Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review Prepare to be astonished at the sensitivity and wisdom with which Maisie resolves her first professional assignment… Its intelligent eccentricity offers relief.’ Maureen Corrigan, ‘Fresh Air’ on NPR If you cross pollinated Vera Brittain’s classic World War I memoir, Testament of Youth, with Dorothy Sayers’s Harriet Vane mysteries and a dash of the old PBS series ‘Upstairs, Downstairs,’ you’d approximate the peculiar range of topics and tones within this novel… ‘ Maisie Dobbs is a quirky literary creation. When Lady Rowan s son makes plans to join the reclusive community, Maisie hurriedly investigates and finds a disturbing mystery at its core whose resolution gives her the courage to confront the ghost that has haunted her for ten years. The deceased had lived on a cooperative farm called The Retreat, a well regarded convalescent refuge for those grievously wounded in the war, ex soldiers too shattered to resume normal life.

Her very first case involves suspected infidelity but turns up something else, a tombstone with only a first name Vincent. Dobbs, Trade and Personal Investigations. After the Armistice, in the spring of 1929, Maisie hangs out her shingle: M.

Maisie left for France to train as a nurse, then served at the front, where she fell in love with a handsome young doctor. It was he who first recognized Maisie s intuitive gifts. She encouraged Maisie to study at Cambridge, and was aided in this by Maurice Blanche, a friend often retained as an investigator by the elite of Europe when discretion and results were required. A suffragette, Lady Rowan took the remarkably smart youngster under her wing and became her patron. Lady Rowan Compton first met Maisie when, at thirteen, she went into service as a maid at her ladyship’s Belgravia mansion.

Winspear books in order