A Lesson in Secrets

I really like this mystery series set in England between the World Wars. Winspear does a really good job of showing the repercussions of WWI and the slow lead up to WWII. This installment had, as a backdrop, a group of young people interested in the ideas of Adolph Hitler.

But even with the rich historical detail, the center is Maisie and her growth as a person. The mysteries seem to enable this growth - everything is integrated so well in these books.

Maisie is a bit stuffy and formal, and I love her anyway. I'll keep reading these and I think there are 17 and this was number 8.

As part of an assignment from the government, Maisie pairs her detecting skills with her teaching skills and joins the faculty of a college in Oxford that was founded after the First World War on the principles of pacifism and international cooperation. But, if the Secret Service's hunch is correct, the university might just be harboring the worst of the worst -- Nazis!

This series never shies away from tackling some of the most sensitive topics that came out of the Great War. This time it's the fates of those soldiers who decided at some point that they no longer wanted to fight. It's a heartbreaking subject but it's dealt with in a really thoughtful way in this story.

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Maisie Dobbs has worked with Scotland Yard in the past, and now she has the opportunity to work with British intelligence. Something isn't quite right at a Cambridge college built on pacifist ideals, and Maisie's job is to uncover anything that might be a danger to the country while she works undercover as a philosophy lecturer. No sooner has the term started than a murder is discovered. Meanwhile back in London, Billy works on a case for an old friend of Maisie's.

Maisie's personality is suited for academia. I've read a number of mysteries with academic settings, and most of the time the professor/sleuth seems to do everything but what s/he is paid to do – teach. Maisie's position is a means to an end, yet she takes her teaching show more responsibilities seriously and fits her investigative work around her class schedule. She seems to enjoy teaching, and I wish there had been more interaction between Maisie and her students in the book.

Maisie's assignment seemed a bit vague to me. Solving the murder was tangential to her assignment, yet she considered her work complete once the murder had been solved (except for finishing out her teaching responsibilities for the term). I'm not sure that espionage brings out the best in Maisie's character. She has always been tactfully forthright, but as a consequence of her intelligence work she finds herself having to lie convincingly on a number of occasions. It will be interesting to see how deeply Maisie can become involved in intelligence work before having a crisis of conscience.

I'm not sure how I feel about this new direction for the series. So far, I prefer Maisie as private investigator rather than spy. However, as the series progresses closer in time to World War II, I have a feeling that national security is going to play a bigger role in Maisie's cases.

This review is based on an advance reader's e-proof provided by the publisher through NetGalley. show less

I really enjoyed this installment of the Maisie series, neglecting other diversions to keep reading almost non-stop once I started it. Here Maisie dips her toe (not by choice) into intelligence work at, of all places, a Cambridge "peace college", and from a historical perspective, the stories start to move away from an almost exclusive focus on WW1 and towards the looming fascist threat. Frustratingly, Winspear continues to tease us regarding Maisie and Stratton, which I feel sure is the endgame. Instead JW is working hard to make us believe Maisie is in love with James Compton. Not sure I buy it!

e character or historical period mystery readers can be a pedantic, finicky lot. As a general rule, we don't do well with the passage of time -- we want our detectives, investigators and heroes to remain in the Victorian, Edwardian or whatever era in perpetuity, solving mysteries during years that only move forward in passing mention, if at all.

I admit to being solidly in this camp and get rather nervous every time an author brings another technological invention or historical event into my series.

But Jacqueline Winspear has impressed me in A Lesson in Secrets, the latest installment in the Maisie Dobbs series. Although the low rumble of impending World War II was already heard in the previous book, A Mapping of Love and Death, Winspear show more mostly avoids a common mistake made by authors who chose to deal with the rather tricky decades between the wars in Europe.

That is, she remembers that Maisie, and indeed everyone around her, wouldn't yet think of the Nazis as the personification of evil in 1932, when the book takes place. Winspear does an excellent job showing that for those just trying to make a living in the aftermath of World War I, the politics and policies of Germany and Austria were skimmed headlines and background noise to the pressing needs of everyday life.

Winspear deals with this in a pretty creative way. She puts Maisie on special assignment for the British Secret Service, placing her in an undercover position as a professor. Her assignment is to just see about anything going on that may be against the interests of the Crown, a rather vague assignment, granted. Naturally, however, the murder of the college's founder, a renowned pacifist, inevitably draws Maisie into another hornet's nest entirely, leaving her navigate the secret service, run her business from afar and still solve a murder she's been ordered not to investigate.

By putting Maisie at an academic institution, Winspear deftly gives Maisie, and by extension the reader, a plausible lens through which to examine the events happening on the continent, without any of the inadvertent, righteous hindsight that authors are inevitably forced to confront when writing about the mid- to late-1930s. The way this is done, through discussion between characters, is some of the best period piece writing I have ever seen.

For example, Priscilla, Maisie's upper-crust close friend who drove an ambulance during World War I, casts a wary eye at the German political landscape, but primarily from a fear for her young sons, who are growing up. Having lost four brothers in the Great War, Priscilla's fear is palpable but not overwrought or written with any kind of prescient foreknowledge of events to come.

Other highlights of this read include more appearances by Detective Chief Superintendent Robert MacFarlane, who is quickly becoming one of the most interesting characters this rich series has to offer.

Notable character development also occurs with Maisie's father and Maisie's own relationship with James Compton is examined.

However, a kind of sub-plot arc involving Sandra, a former servant of the Comptons, is rather neglected. Maisie can't solve it herself and the story mostly unfolds through phone calls with her assistant, Billy. Because of that, what could be an equally interesting, if secondary, story line, becomes a bit distracting and feels more like an interruption than a separate plot arc.

Also, the last two installments in the series had me a bit concerned Maisie was becoming a bit of a Mary Sue. And while this installment in the series has much to recommend it, I fear Maisie is still walking dangerously close to that line.

Mary Sues are modestly perfect in every way, always of sound judgement and, naturally, coincidentally having whatever talent or ability a given situation calls for, like speaking an esoteric language or just happening to know about the migratory patterns of birds. In short, boring in their often ridiculous preparedness.

Granted, I don't read Maisie Dobbs expecting the gritty, hyper-realistically flawed characters that Denise Mina or Tana French create. That's an entirely different style of mystery, if not a exactly a separate genre. But that being said, Winspear is too talented to let such a wonderful character become two-dimensional.

Winspear seems to address this by making it clear she and James are not waiting for wedding bells to consummate their relationship. Actually, she makes it a bit too clear, though not through any explicit scenes (yes, a young adult can more than safely read this). Still, it's brought up often enough with comments from other characters that one wants to say, "We get it, already. They're in a conjugal relationship."

But, given the time period, in a way that was a bit rebellious, as is Maisie being a woman entrepreneur and investigator. So perhaps I am being a bit harsh on Winspear in this regard. Still, I think it would be refreshing to see Maisie be bad, or at least not good, at Math or something.

This book also highlights how Masie still goes about trying to solve her assistant's and father's and everyone else's problems. It's not a problem that she does good deeds and finds deft ways to help those she cares about with her new wealth, exactly, but the fact that no one but her father seems to lash out against her flat-out meddling is a bit implausible.

Still, a solid entry into what is still a great series. For once, I am actually looking forward to seeing what impact the march of time and World War II has on the wonderful characters Winspear has created. show less

Winspear continues to write intriguing, well-plotted, well-paced mysteries featuring detective Maisie Dobbs. Set in 1932, this book, the eighth in the series, is beginning to turn away from WWI and look to WWII, and sets up many new opportunities for Maisie. The characters continue to be full and realistic, and Winspear continues to draw out just enough about Maisie's life, her past, and her problems to keep us interested and rooting for her.

My one quarrel with the book is that there was simply not enough about Maisie's personal life in the book. Previous stories have spent more time growing Maisie's personal relationships, and I had high hopes of learning more than I did about Maisie's relationship with James Compton.

Maisie Dobbs is an engaging character and, while this isn't the best I've read in this series, it is a solid and satisfying read. Maisie is asked to work undercover for the secret service at a college in Cambridge, attempting to ferret out any danger to the realm. While she is at it, she assists Scotland Yard in solving a murder or two and resolvs the personal problems of those around her much more satisfactorily than she is able to resolve her own. Fun.