When we last saw Maisie Dobbs, the investigator and psychologist protagonist of this long-running series, she was crossing from Gibraltar to Spain to take up nursing duties again during the Spanish Civil War. I had expected the next book to involve her in that conflict, however, when this novel begins, she has completed her nursing duties and back in England. She’s ready to try to take up her life again after a couple of peripatetic years seeking solace after the tragic deaths of her husband and unborn child. There she is swept into the shadowy world of the British secret service by old acquaintances and sent on a mission to Nazi Germany impersonating the daughter of an important engineer and inventor. His real daughter is too ill to travel and the Germans have agreed to release the man from the concentration camp in which he has been held for a couple of years but only to her, not a diplomat or other representative. A well-done story and depiction of Germany just prior to the beginning of the Second World War. Up to Winspear’s usual standards. 284 pp.
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