A Dangerous Place by Jacqueline Winspear

I probably was pre-disposed not to like this installment of the Maisie Dobbs series because I drove my Mom out to the St. Louis County Public Library to see the author and she had cancelled due to illness! Argh! (Belated note to self: always remember to call ahead and confirm that an event will take place as scheduled before driving more than 20 minutes away to attend said event! Duh!) Anyway, at the end of the last book Maisie had decided to close down her detective agency and travel to India.  I was looking forward to reading about Maisie's experiences but the new book sums up her time there in a few sentences and skips ahead to Gibraltar during the Spanish Civil War. Wait, what? Winspear tells us via letters written to Maisie by various friends and family that Maisie has experienced a catastrophic personal loss.  Maisie is so distraught that she cannot face returning to her home in England.  Gibraltar acts as a kind of limbo for Maisie as she struggles to regain her purpose and the will to go on. 308 pages.

Leaving everything most loved : a novel by Jacqueline Winspear

Maisie Dobbs has reached a crossroads.  Her lover James Compton is moving to Canada to help test prototype war planes, her assistant Billy Beale is ready to start a new life with his family, and Maisie can't decide if she wants to continue her detective business, start teaching, or travel. Before she can make a decision, she's asked to investigate the murder of an Indian nanny.  The nanny had left her family behind in India to come to England to earn enough money to start a school for young girls. In the course of the investigation Maisie becomes intrigued by Indian culture.  Was the nanny murdered for betraying her family's values? What will Maisie decide to do?  I can't wait to read what happens next! 339 pages.

Elegy for Eddie by Jacqueline Winspear

Is the murder of an innocent justified in the cause of the greater good?  Maisie Dobbs confronts this question head on when she investigates the murder of one of her own.  Three friends and fellow costermongers of Maisie's dad are not convinced that Eddie Pettit's death was an accident.  They ask Maisie to investigate his death at the paper factory where he worked.   Eddie's employer is a powerful British publisher heavily invested in preparing for the next war with Germany.  Was Eddie murdered to keep war preparations secret? 335 pages.

A lesson in secrets : a Maisie Dobbs novel by Jacqueline Winspear.

In the previous books of the series, Jacqueline Winspear wrote about such issues as class, mental illness, returning veterans, and continuing tensions between nations in the aftermath of World War I.  Now Winspear takes up the rise of the Secret Service.  Maisie Dobbs has just been asked by the Special Branch of Scotland Yard to get a job as a lecturer at a newly founded pacifist university.  Maisie's assignment is to discover who is sympathetic to the rising Nazi party and what they are doing in support of the party.  Almost before she begins, the founder and president of the college dies from an apparent heart attack. Maisie quickly determines that the president was murdered and uses her undercover identity to try to find the killer.  Another engrossing look at post World War I England! 323 pages.

The mapping of love and death : a Maisie Dobbs novel by Jacqueline Winspear

An American cartographer maps out a claim to a potentially oil-rich piece of California real estate before heading out to fight in WWI.  Many years after the war his body is discovered buried in an Allied Forces trench, the apparent casualty of a German bombing attack.  He left behind a cache of love letters but not the map to the land claim.  His family asks Maisie Dobbs to find the mysterious British nurse who wrote the letters. Maisie's search follows many false trails but eventually leads to the discovery of the missing map and another hidden legacy of the American. Reading about the role of cartographers in WWI is an added bonus! 338 pages.

An incomplete revenge : a Maisie Dobbs novel by Jacqueline Winspear

Maisie goes to the country with the Beale family to pick hops and have a busman's holiday.  Her new boyfriend James Compton has asked her to check out a property that his company would like to buy.  She discovers that the local village has a guilty secret.  During the war, a Dutch family died when their bakery burned to the ground.  Why didn't the villagers help them? What does a caravan of Gypsies know about the secret? 306 pages.

Messenger of truth : a Maisie Dobbs novel by Jacqueline Winspear

This time out Maisie investigates the murder of WWI veteran and artist, Nicholas Bassington-Hope.  He fell from a scaffold while preparing a new work for exhibition.  His twin sister Georgina, herself a WWI journalist, will not accept that his death was an accident.  Maisie searches for clues to his death among the artists, fascists, and smugglers in Nicholas's circle of family and friends. 322 pages.

Birds of a feather by Jacqueline Winspear.

Maisie Dobbs has moved into her new office and has a full-time assistant, Billy Beale.  Her latest assignment is to find the run-away daughter of a wealthy grocery chain owner.  In the course of her investigation, Maisie discovers that three of the daughter's friends have recently died.  Coincidence?  Maisie doesn't think so.  She digs deeper to find that during the war the women all participated in the shameful practice of giving white feathers to men who were not serving in the military.  Is someone killing the women for revenge? 336 pages.