Thursday, October 24, 2019

The American Agent by Jacqueline Winspear

I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Jacqueline Winspear's previous Maisie Dobbs mystery, To Die But Once, until I read her latest work, The American Agent. Set in England during The Blitz of 1940, The American Agent follows Dobbs, a self-taught private detective. She works to solve the murder of an American war correspondent who met her demise just shortly after meeting Maisie, who was on ambulance duty during a bombing raid on London.
Winspear does a thorough job of working Maisie through all of the potential suspects and leading the reader through a variety of possibilities when it comes to the identity of the murderer; but it is with her historical fiction work where Winspear shines.
Maisie has several friends involved in various aspects of the war effort, as well as in Scotland Yard. She interacts with them in a variety of locations that highlight what it was like in the days of wartime Britain. You encounter displaced people, bombing raids, and propaganda efforts that were all a part of 1940 life. In fact, Maisie is trying to adopt a young girl whose mother passed away after she gave up her daughter and sent her to safety outside of London proper. There are many twists that revolve around the war and the people involved, and that's what I particularly like about Winspear's books.
The other thing I like about the Maisie Dobbs series is I think you can start with any volume and get caught up. The American Agent is book 15, and I actually started the series with number 14. I have since gone back and read 11-13, all of which I have found to be good reads.

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