Book Review: Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear (Maisie Dobbs #1)

Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear is a historical mystery novel set in London. But don't just head out and get it if you prefer your mysteries or crimes a bit on the stronger, harder, more depraved side. This novel is set after the World War 1 and is a peek into the realities and harshness of a war. Maisie Dobbs starts as a househelpat the Belgravia Mansion which belongs to the Comptons. But thats not where the book starts.
The book opens in the year 1929, with Maisie setting up her detective agency and a man approaching her to investigate if his wife is having an affair. Soon after solving the crime, the book takes us back to the beginnings of Dobbs as a private investigator. We learn about her dexterity at the Belgravia mansion and how the lady of the house Mrs Compton and her friend Maurie Blanche, discover her to be an intelligent girl and decide to mentor her. She goes as far as getting admission in the university but the war breaks out and she enlists as a nurse. Sent to France, she finds there some friends and a sweetheart. What happens to her sweetheart and why she is now alone remain mystery almost till the end of this intertwined saga of Dobbs the person and the case, (remember there was a case she had solved but it wasn't as simple as it looked on the surface, and it reeled her in because she could sense there was more to it- that case).

The book is slow and is most definitely not a pacy thriller or crime fiction. It takes its time to develop, Every now and then Maurice's wise words surface in Maisie's mind as she talks to people who come and go in the book. The old world English in which some conversations take place is also a cold shower if you are far removed from that kind of language and context (read if you are a millennial).

So, the book really didn't work for me. I thinkI had to be really strict and disciplined in order to finish and not start anything else. It demands patience and a very different kind of love to read at least the first Maisie Dobbs. A lot of history, some mystery and some psychology comprise this book. I had found it in a library and wouldn't want you to spend money on it to buy and read it.

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