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A Lesson in Secrets: A Maisie Dobbs Novel Kindle Edition
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarperCollins e-books
- Publication dateMarch 22, 2011
- File size2311 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Exclusive: Lee Child Interviews Jacqueline Winspear
Jacqueline Winspear, like her interviewer, the iconic, bestselling author Lee Child, originally hails from the United Kingdom. A Lesson in Secrets is her eighth novel featuring psychologist-investigator and former WW1 nurse, Maisie Dobbs. Here she talks with Child about her work on the series, and her enduring interest in the aftermath of WW1.
Lee Child: People are often surprised that I'm a huge Maisie Dobbs fan, because Jack Reacher is all about a kind of Spartan American masculinity, and Maisie Dobbs is all about a kind of feminine English refinement. But they're both strong, unconventional people. Perhaps that's the cross-genre appeal? Do you find that Maisie attracts an unusual mix of readers?
Jacqueline Winspear: I’m thrilled you’re such a Maisie Dobbs fan--and you can count me among those millions of Jack Reacher fans. Maisie and Reacher are both unconventional, but I believe another factor in their cross-genre appeal is that both have endured life-changing challenges. Maisie attracts diverse readers: men and women, all age groups, veterans, nurses, college students, people who have faced troubles, and people interested in the era.
LC: And in fact your novels are driven by violence far worse than mine--off the page, granted, but there’s no getting around the fact that at the heart of your books is the aftermath of a horrendous war, with its attendant violence and death. How do you see the role of violence in your novels?
JW: I think you hit the theme there with “aftermath.” The violence in my books is that searing, painful residue left by the passing of a terrible time, when people were also crushed emotionally by the deep losses over a four-year period. In addition, there’s that element of violence that lingers--in Among the Mad, for example--when war’s tentacles will not let go. We see that again today in the stories of veterans who are still fighting their wars, but the conflict is raging inside them.
LC: As a kid in England I remember seeing hundreds of maimed old men, and hundreds of lonely old women. My grandfather was an example of the first, and two great-aunts examples of the second - sad reminders of a terrible time. Was it something similar that drew you to the First World War and the “Between the Wars” era that followed?
JW: I have the same memories--my grandfather was wounded at the Battle of the Somme, and my grandmother was partially blinded at the Woolwich Arsenal, in an explosion that wounded her sister and killed several girls working alongside her. There were the elderly spinsters in my neighborhood, and for each there was that old sepia photograph on the mantelpiece, of a sweetheart or brother lost to war. Those childhood memories led me to think a lot about what happens after war is done. As a character says in Birds of a Feather, “That’s the trouble with war; it lives on inside the living.”
LC: I was introduced to Maisie Dobbs by my wife, who passed through an airport and picked up the first in the series. She loved it, and urged me to read it, and I'm glad I did. It's one of the very, very few series we both love equally--in fact, perhaps the only one. Is this typical of your readers?
JW: I receive so many emails from fans who tell me that the books are read by all members of the family. And many women tell me that it was their husband who first discovered Maisie. The books are as accessible to readers aged about fourteen as they are to seniors. There are few things today that all age groups within a family can engage in, discuss and get excited about, so it’s lovely when I hear that family members are awaiting the next book so they can all read it.
LC: Maisie is definitively feminine, but she's running a business, and poking around in a "man's world," which is true to the times, and indicative of the early stages of feminism in the West. Was that something you wanted to explore?
JW: It would have been difficult to introduce a character such as Maisie and not explore the fact that the Great War left so many women to forge a life alone. If there was one thing I wanted to do, it was to bring the spirit of that generation to the character of Maisie Dobbs. Of course, some women floundered and lived lonely lives, but there were a great many who blazed a trail. I believe an archetype was born at that time--the stoic British woman who is independent and more than a little opinionated, with a heart of gold under a tough exterior, and who knows what it is to endure. Dame Maggie Smith has played that character in several films.
LC: Maisie understands human psychology in a way that seems to be an early and experimental pre-echo of what we'd now call criminal profiling. It's a huge part of both her process and her appeal. Where did that come from?
JW: That developed in a very organic way. Having established her as a “sensitive,” I wanted to give her real expertise--and there are historical underpinnings to this aspect of her character. Maisie studied the Moral Sciences curriculum at Girton College when psychology was in its infancy. I have the prospectus from 1913, and about one third of the course was the study of modern psychology. It was a time of great experimentation, so Maisie’s processes have their roots in real practices considered innovative at the time.
LC: One of your decisions I admire is the way you have moved the series forward in time so firmly. Most writers would have continued mining the same immediate post-war seam forever. What was your thinking behind that? And how do you keep the character fresh as the series itself develops?
JW: I once heard you say at a conference, “The reader comes back to a series, not to find out what the sleuth does with the case, but what the case does to the sleuth.” I agree. We are all impacted not only by our past, but by our current circumstances and those around us. You always put Reacher in a new area, be it small town or big city; and through his wandering we learn a lot about him. I work with the geography of time. Not everyone likes change and many readers would like Maisie Dobbs to stay as she is in a given book. But life’s not like that--the goalposts tend to move when we are at our most comfortable, and I want to keep the series fresh.
LC: I’m often asked if I have a favorite book within my series, so now I’m turning the tables: Do you have favorites among your novels?
JW: That’s such a difficult question, because each book not only represents a different place on my journey as a writer, but has been inspired by something that touched me. I think Maisie Dobbs will always be very tightly held in my affections, because it was my first book and was written at a difficult time in my life, when I was recovering from a horrible accident. The other choice would be The Mapping of Love and Death, because it was inspired by the true story of a soldier whose remains lay under Belgian soil for some 90 years until unearthed by a farmer. I learned more about him when I became involved in the quest to discover his origins. When I look at that book, I think of a young man lost to war who was never identified and who was eventually laid to rest as “A Soldier of The Great War, Known Unto God.” I ache for the parents who never knew where their son died, for he had probably been listed as “Missing, Presumed Dead.”
From Publishers Weekly
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From Booklist
Review
From the Back Cover
In the summer of 1932, Maisie Dobbs' career takes an exciting new turn when she accepts her first assignment for the British Secret Service. Posing as a junior lecturer, she is sent to a private college in Cambridge to monitor any activities "not in the interests of His Majesty's government."
When the college's controversial pacifist founder and principal, Greville Liddicote, is murdered, Maisie is directed to stand back as Scotland Yard spearheads the investigation. She soon discovers, however, that the circumstances of Liddicote's death appear inextricably linked to the suspicious comings and goings of faculty and students under her surveillance.
To unravel this web, Maisie must overcome a reluctant Secret Service, discover shameful hidden truths about Britain's conduct during the Great War, and face off against the rising powers of the the Nazi Party in Britain—all as the storm clouds of World War II gather on the horizon.
About the Author
Jacqueline Winspear is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Consequences of Fear, The American Agent, and To Die but Once, as well as thirteen other bestselling Maisie Dobbs novels and The Care and Management of Lies, a Dayton Literary Peace Prize finalist. Jacqueline has also published two nonfiction books, What Would Maisie Do? and a memoir, This Time Next Year We’ll Be Laughing. Originally from the United Kingdom, she divides her time between California and the Pacific Northwest.
Product details
- ASIN : B004FEF6QK
- Publisher : HarperCollins e-books; Reprint edition (March 22, 2011)
- Publication date : March 22, 2011
- Language : English
- File size : 2311 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 477 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #38,419 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #150 in Read & Listen for Less
- #317 in Private Investigator Mysteries (Kindle Store)
- #341 in Historical Mysteries (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Jacqueline Winspear is the author of eighteen novels in the award-winning, New York Times, National and International bestselling series featuring psychologist-investigator Maisie Dobbs. In addition, Jacqueline’s 2023 non-series novel, The White Lady was a New York Times and National bestseller, and her 2014 WW1 novel, The Care and Management of Lies, was again a New York Times and National bestseller, as well as a Dayton Literary Peace Prize finalist. Jacqueline has also published two non-fiction books, What Would Maisie Do? and an Edgar-nominated memoir, This Time Next Year We’ll Be Laughing. Jacqueline’s work encompasses essays and journalism covering a wide range of subjects, from women working in wildfire management to articles on international education and social history.
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A Lesson in Secrets begins with Maisie being followed from Kent back to London as she drives her "crimson MG 14/40." The car following her was a "black Armstrong Siddeley." Well, there you go! I had to stop and look up these autos and find out more about them. Now I know some readers could care less about these details, but learning about things like these cars just enhances the story for me. And Ms. Winspear's novels are filled with interesting and eclectic tidbits from the early-to-mid 20th century about England and the times.
Maisie is called to help the British Secret Service in this particular novel, but gets to do so while posing as a professor in academia, exactly something Maisie would enjoy, as would I. You see, I think I enjoy and can relate to these novels because I can relate to Maisie's interests, her independence, and her stubbornness. I know I would enjoy her private detective work (way more than her psychologist work). I worry that I am too independent at times (as does Maisie). And, of course, I can relate to her inability to step back and analyze her own life instead of trying to please and fix everyone else's (to a degree).
Maisie's undercover work in Cambridge leads her to have to solve the murder of a controversial character. I was reminded of one of my favorite children's book authors, Munro Leaf (The Story of Ferdinand), and was also reminded of Dr. Seuss, or Theodore Geisel, whose books reflected some of his political positions. World War II is seen as a "good war" since it was waged against someone as demented and despicable as Hitler, so the pacifist position in the buildup to this war could not have been popular. This pacifist position some held, as well as the popularity of the Nazi buildup, are two interesting subjects brought forth in A Lesson in Secrets.
If you have not yet read A Lesson in Secrets, I hope you are intrigued and can't wait to read it soon. If you have already read the novel, I hope you have enjoyed revisiting the eighth Maisie book.
In this book, Maisie is asked by the British Secret Service to take a job as a philosophy professor at a "peace" college in Cambridge. She is to report anything "suspicious." The Secret Service is actually looking for communist affiliations among the international student body at the College of St. Francis. Maisie, however, feels that what's suspicious at St. Francis is the rise of fascism, which the Secret Service pretty much disregards. Maisie is there only a day or two when Greville Liddicote, founder of St. Francis, is murdered in his office. The main thread of A Lesson in Secrets, then, is Maisie's search for the murderer. Her search is successful and the resolution is satisfying, although the way that Maisie comes upon the final clue is by accident, and that isn't satisfying.
In addition to the main mystery, there are subplots. Did Greville Liddicote really write the children's book that the government banned during World War I? Or did he steal it from another author? And what about Maisie's former roommate Sandra, whose husband Eric died in an accident -- was it really an accident, or was it murder? Will Sandra uncover evidence of murder, or die trying? Then there's Billy Beale and his wife and family: will they agree to accept the new house that Maisie wants to rent to them? Last of all, there's Maisie's love interest, James Compton, who appears to be writing her letters from Canada . . . but the letters look as if they were mailed from London.
Winspear successfully weaves all the subplots and the main plot together, though much of the weaving consists of Maisie driving her car back and forth to London, and this strikes the reader as repetitive and unimaginative. Finally, there is, as I stated earlier, the question of dramatic tension: it simply doesn't exist in this book. The reasons to like this book are the political history woven into the 1932 setting, the characters of Maisie and her friends, and the solution. These are, I suspect, the reasons that most people read the Maisie Dobbs books.
Top reviews from other countries
I wasn't sure what to expect when I read that Maisie would be working for the "Secret Service", but it was no surprise to find her investigating a murder. I felt her frustration when her concerns over a pro-Nazi group were dismissed, but that's the benefit of (or problem with) living after World War Two and knowing what's coming. It felt strange for her not to be working with Billy after they've tackled so many cases together, but he's developed enough to work on his own, which is good. I thought that the ending was a bit rushed, which is why I only give the book four stars.