Maisie Dobbs

 

Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear 304 pp.

This is the introductory book to the popular Maisie Dobbs series about a young woman private investigator in England. After being mentored by her former employer, sent to college, and then becoming a nurse at the front during the horrendous battles of World War I. After the war she starts her own private detective agency. Her first case leads her to another mystery, one involving veterans of the war who are physically and/or mentally maimed by their experiences and the strange "Retreat" supposed to be helping them. Just enough information is given about Maisie's and her story to make a perfect lead in to the later books. 

The Fighters: Americans in Combat in Afghanistan and Iraq

The Fighters: Americans in Combat in Afghanistan and Iraq by C. J. Chivers, 374 pages.

Chivers gives us several moving portraits of American soldiers, sailors (Navy Corpsmen, anyway) and pilots who fought in the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is stunning to realize that over 2.5 million American military personnel have served in these two conflicts since 2001. Chivers, who served as a Marine Corps officer, starts his book with the story of Lt. Layne McDowell. McDowell's carrier, the USS Enterprise, was returning from the Persian Gulf in 2001 just as the twin towers were destroyed. McDowell, who had flown combat missions over Serbia and Montenegro, would now fly his first missions in his F-14 Tomcat over Afghanistan. Years later he would return to the conflicts flying an F/A-18 Super Hornet.
Leo Kryszewski, a Staff Seargent in the Army served in Iraq. Dustin Kirby, a Navy Corpsman was horribly wounded while serving with the Marines and lost years to recovery and post traumatic stress (and attendant problems like alcohol abuse).Army Air Cavalry Kiowa helicopter pilot Michael Slebodnik served and died in Afghanistan. All of these important stories, and others, are respectfully told in an engaging and riveting narrative.
An important account of these seemingly endless wars.
The downloadable audio is narrated ably by Scott Brick

The Right Side

The Right Side by Spencer Quinn, 323 pages (2017)

I've read and relished Spencer Quinn's Chet and Bernie mysteries, but I wasn't prepared for the mood switch in his newest book, The Right Side.  LeAnne Hogan, a soldier who was badly hurt in a bombing in Afghanistan when she was nearing the end of her deployment, is struggling with her injuries, both physical and psychological.  When the book opens, she is in full rebellion at Walter Reed VA Hospital, rejecting her prosthetic eye as well as her psychological consultations.  It is an understatement to say that LeAnne is not lovable as she fights off everyone around her, unable to trust even her mother.  Her abrasiveness repels me, but as she flees Walter Reed without telling anyone, her story is too compelling to put down.

Flashbacks ping us around in her life and include bits of her childhood, her athletic abilities, her acceptance into West Point, and her father's death.  We bounce around in her head, feeling the post-traumatic stress as she tries to get a handle on where she is and what happened during her last assignment in Afghanistan.  Along the way, a dog adheres to her, in spite of the fact that she is decidedly not a dog lover, as she travels across the country in an attempt to find the answers in her life.