Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear

After putting up a post reviewing the 18th and final Maisie Dobbs mystery I realized as I was preparing a summing up post on the series that I had not posted a review on one of the earliest books, Pardonable Lies. I went back and found the review I had written in 2009 before I started blogging. My reviews were shorter at that time.

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 20. - 483.) Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear – In the fall of 1930 Maisie Dobbs, psychologist and investigator, is back for her 3rd mystery. Two cases occupy her. At Scotland Yard’s request she interviews a 13 year old girl suspected of killing her pimp “uncle”. Convinced Avril Jarvis did not murder, Maisie seeks to establish her innocence. At the same time Maisie is asked by Sir Cecil Lawton K.C. to confirm his son, Ralph, died in World War I. While there was an obvious strain in the father / son relationship Lawton is honouring the request of his late wife who believed to her dying day that her son had not perished during the War. Maisie works out an arrangement that in return for taking on Lawton’s quest he would defend Jarvis. As she starts upon her investigations Maisie is asked by her close friend, Priscilla Partridge, to determine what happened to her brother, Peter Evernden, whose place of death during the War is unknown to her. Pursuing her investigations of what happened to the young men during the War Maisie finds herself in the murky work done by Maurice Blanche during the War. Most challenging, she is drawn back to her horrific memories of the War. The voice of her deceased mother tells her to slay her dragons. While she faces physical danger in her queries the greater risk is to her mind as she returns to France 12 years after the end of the War. While the voices in her head are more muted I was reminded of Ian Rutledge and Hamish, the deceased corporal, who shares Ian’s mind in the mysteries of Charles Todd. The emotional traumas of the War, covered up by her dedication to work, can no longer be avoided when her investigations take her back into the War. The wounds of the mind linger longest in all the characters who went to the War. I enjoyed the book but enjoyed the first two in the series better. This book is a better mystery but the investigation is more conventional than the previous mysteries. Her talents at reading people are less important. Maisie is a worthy member of a trio of WW I veterans in contemporary mystery writing joining Rutledge and Rennie Airth’s hero John Madden. (May 31/09) 

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Winspear, Jacqueline – (2008) - Maisie Dobbs; (Best fiction of 2008) (2008) - Birds of a Feather; (2009) - Pardonable Lies; (2011) - Messenger of Truth; (2012) - An Incomplete Revenge; (2012) - Among the Mad; (2013) - The Mapping of Love and Death; (2016) - A Lesson in Secrets; (2016) - Elegy for Eddie; (2018) Leaving Everything Most Loved; (2020) - A Dangerous Place - Part I on Maisie's life since the last book and Part II a review; (2020) - A Journey to Munich; (2021) - In This Grave Hour; (2021) - To Die But Once; (2022) - The American Agent; (2023) - The Consequences of Fear; (2023) - A Sunlit Weapon; (2024) - The Comfort of Ghosts