Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear Reviewed By Cathy Walker

Can you name a female private detective? Your answer might be Miss Marple or Mma Ramotswe of the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency, but thanks to Jacqueline Winspear, Maisie Dobbs is another name to add to that list. Initially it seems that Maisie Dobbs will cover much of the same ground as the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency. Like Mma Ramotswe, Maisie has newly established her detective agency and faces difficulties in convincing male clients that a female detective can be trusted. However, further reading of Maisie Dobbs reveals it to be a potentially more complex series of novels.

Whilst the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency is set against the backdrop of a romantically described Botswana, Maisie Dobbs is firmly placed in post World War I England.

Maisie is drawn into a case revolving around a farm in Kent, The Retreat, which provides a home for those who bear facial disfigurements from their service in the Great War. Residents give up both their surname and assets to join The Retreat. Maisie is compelled to understand what is happening at The Retreat and the full reasons for this do not become apparent until much later in the book. The case provides an effective basis for the author to tell Maisie's own extraordinary life story and the particular scars she bears from her time as a nurse on the frontline in France; much of the novel is devoted to this.

Powerful description of Maisie's encounters in France encourage comparison with Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy rather than the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency. The horrors of the trenches are clearly depicted and it is particularly refreshing to read such an account from a female perspective.

Alongside the descriptions of war, it is Maisie's own life and achievements that have the greatest impact on the reader. The daughter of a costermonger (a fruit and veg market seller), Maisie was encouraged to pursue her education by her parents. However, their plans to send Maisie to school were thwarted by her mother's ill health and early death. In the early years of the twentieth century there was limited free secondary education and no NHS. So when Maisie's mother becomes ill savings accrued for her education are used for medical care.

Following her mother's death Maisie has little option other than to enter domestic service (aged 13).

Luckily for Maisie her obvious intellectual capacity (and her inability not to read books when cleaning the library) brings her to the attention of her employer who ensures her education. Seemingly against the odds of her working class roots she gains entry to a ladies college of Cambridge University... that is until war intervenes. Maisie Dobbs is an effectively written debut. The plotting of the case of The Retreat provides an effective opportunity to introduce us the skills of a new detective but helps the author to develop the character is a more rounded way.

In Maisie Jacqueline Winspear has created a character of depth who is representative of her time; she is a woman who has struggled to get an education and has faced, in her work and personal life, the horrors of war. I look forward to reading Jacqueline Winspear's next Maisie Dobbs mystery Birds of a Feather. Published By John Murray ISBN: 0719566223

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