Maisie Dobbs; Birds of a Feather; Pardonable Lies

 Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear (2003) 301 pages

I plunged into the first three books of the Maisie Dobbs mystery series. In the first book, Maisie Dobbs, named after the protagonist, the story begins in 1929, with Maisie opening her own business, "M. Dobbs. Trade and Personal Investigations." Her first client asks for Maisie to find out whether his wife is cheating on him or not. It becomes clear that Maisie is not just interested in doing a job, but in enhancing the lives of the people she works for. She follows the wife and also gets to know her. The story also jumps back in time to 1910 and traces Maisie's life from the time when she and her father were grieving her mother's death. Her father becomes concerned about his daughter and finds her a place to live and work in the house of a wealthy family that he delivers groceries to. While their separation is difficult for them both, Maisies's life trajectory is altered. She eventually becomes educated and later becomes a nurse in France during WWI.

Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear (2004) 311 pages

In Birds of a Feather, Maisie is tasked with finding Charlotte, the daughter of a wealthy entrepreneur, the owner of upscale grocery stores. She learns that three of the girls that Charlotte used to hang around have recently died. Maisie needs to figure out whether Charlotte fled because she thinks she is in danger, or if Charlotte fled because she is a murderer.

We learn a bit more about Detective Inspector Stratton, who sometimes butts heads with Maisie, but who also seems interested in a having relationship with her. Another suitor is Andrew Dene, a doctor who was also mentored by Maisie's mentor, Maurice.

Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear (2005) 342 pages

In Pardonable Lies, Maisie juggles several tasks: A well-regarded British barrister wants Maisie to help him honor the deathbed wish of his wife, to find out whether their son, Ralph, had really died in the war. It would seem that the barrister would prefer that his son were dead, based on the strained relationship they had had. Also related to war, a college friend of Maisie's‒Priscilla‒who lost all three of her brothers in the war, asks Maisie to find out where her brother Peter died, because that information was never turned over to the family. In a third case, Maisie is looking for justice for Avril, an abused thirteen-year-old whose stepfather handed her over to a man who brought her to London to work as a prostitute. When that man died, Avril was accused of his murder. While Maisie's assistant Billy finds out information about Avril's family, Maisie goes to France to investigate the war deaths, and to also confront her own war demons from nursing near the battlefields and sustaining injuries. Maisie is also feeling somewhat estranged from her mentor, Maurice Blanche, finding it hard to know whether she can trust him anymore.

I enjoyed all these stories, which show Maisie's poor background and her evolution into a different kind of investigator as tutored by her mentor, Maurice Blanche and by Khan, a man from Ceylon, who teaches meditation.