Maisie Dobbs
Jacqueline Winspear
Soho Press
<p>Lady Rowan Compton first met Maisie when, at thirteen, she went into service as a maid at her ladyship's Belgravia mansion. A suffragette, Lady Rowan took the remarkably smart youngster under her wing and became her patron. She encouraged Maisie to study at Cambridge, and was aided in this by Maurice Blanche, a friend often retained as an investigator by the elite of Europe when discretion and results were required. It was he who first recognized Maisie's intuitive gifts.<br><br>The outbreak of war changed everything. Maisie left for France to train as a nurse, then served at the front, where she fell in love with a handsome young doctor.<br><br>After the Armistice, in the spring of 1929, Maisie hangs out her shingle: <i>M. Dobbs, Trade and Personal Investigations</i>. Her very first case involves suspected infidelity but turns up something else, a tombstone with only a first name--Vincent. And then she finds another. The deceased had lived on a cooperative farm called The...</br></br></br></br></p>