Review: In This Grave Hour by Jacqueline Winspear

In This Grave Hour by Jacqueline Winspear, May 2017, 350 pages, Allison and Busby, ISBN: 0749021802

Reviewed by Terry Halligan.
(Read more of Terry's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

Britain is at war. Returned from a dangerous mission onto enemy soil and having encountered an old enemy and the Fuhrer himself along the way, Maisie Dobbs is fully aware of the gravity of the current situation and how her world is on the cusp of great change. One of those changes can be seen in the floods of refugees that are arriving in Britain, desperate for sanctuary from the approaching storm of war. When Maisie stumbles on the deaths of refugees who may have been more than ordinary people, she is drawn into an investigation that requires all her insight and strength.

Running her own private investigation agency, Maisie has plenty of work coming in and is busy with current enquiries when she is approached at her home address by a lady known as Dr Francesca Thomas who explains that she wants to employ Maisie and her firm to try to prevent a murder from happening. Dr Thomas works for the Belgian Government and explains that several thousand refugees fled their country during the Great War and many had settled in the UK, changing their names if appropriate. One Belgian named Frederick Addens, was unfortunately found dead in St Pancras Station in early August, shot in the back of the head.

According to Dr Thomas, Scotland Yard were not too interested in spending a lot of time investigated the death of a foreign national, particularly at a time of heightened security because of the impending war. Dr Thomas said a Detective Inspector Caldwell at Scotland Yard was in charge of the case and Maisie has had dealings with him before. She wants Maisie to look into the case and she will pay all the expenses.

Maisie reluctantly takes up the case and asks her assistants, Billy Beale and Sandra Pickering at her Fitzroy Square, London W1 office address to look into various aspects of it immediately. Using all the skills that she has picked up in over ten years of investigations Maisie soon sets to work in solving this latest case. Maisie also has to look into a couple of other cases which are similarly quite complex but this adds to the enjoyment of this very gripping story.

Jacqueline Winspear is a very gifted author of historical mystery thrillers and I am very pleased to have the opportunity to review her latest work. I have read for review several of her previous books and consequently I appreciate the very detailed research that the author makes when plotting her stories. You really get a good sense of what daily life was like in the 1930s. This is a very high quality story with very good characterisation of Maisie, Billy and the other lesser characters which are so insightful that they just leap off of the page.

I enjoyed reading this story immensely and I do look forward to reading more of the highly intriguing adventures of Maisie from this very idiosyncratic and evocative writer. Extremely well recommended.

Terry Halligan, May 2017

New Reviews: Brett, McNamee, Malone, Ramsay, Roberts, Siger, Welsh, Winspear, Yoshida

Here are nine reviews which have been added to the Euro Crime website today, three have appeared on the blog over the last couple of weeks and six are completely new.

NB. You can keep up to date with Euro Crime by following the blog and/or liking the Euro Crime Facebook page.

New Reviews

Mark Bailey reviews the latest in the Fethering series by Simon Brett, The Strangling on the Stage;

Lynn Harvey reviews Eoin McNamee's Blue is the Night, the third part in a loose trilogy;

Amanda Gillies reviews Michael J Malone's Blood Tears, the first in the DI Ray McBain series;

Terry Halligan reviews Blind Alley by Danielle Ramsay, the third in the DI Jack Brady series set in Tyneside;

Amanda also reviews Mark Roberts's What She Saw, the second in the DCI Rosen series;

Terry also reviews the latest in the Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series by Jeffrey Siger: Mykonos After Midnight;

Michelle Peckham reviews Louise Welsh's A Lovely Way to Burn, the first in the "Plague Times" trilogy;

Susan White reviews Leaving Everything Most Loved by Jacqueline Winspear

and Laura Root reviews Shuichi Yoshida's Parade tr, Philip Gabriel.



Previous reviews can be found in the review archive.

Forthcoming titles can be found by author or date or by category, here along with releases by year.

Review: Leaving Everything Most Loved by Jacqueline Winspear

Leaving Everything Most Loved by Jacqueline Winspear, January 2014, 352 pages, Allison and Busby, ISBN: 0749014598

Reviewed by Susan White.
(Read more of Susan's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

Maisie Dobbs is a private investigator living in London and this novel is based in 1933. Maisie brings her training and education to solve those cases often left unsolved by the police. In this case, a brother travels from India to ask her help in solving the murder of his sister who has been found shot through her forehead.

The more Maisie searches into the life of Usha, the more she grows concerned about the fate of Indian women brought to England by British families as cheap child care and domestic help who are often mistreated or abandoned when not needed anymore. The mystery of Usha's death starts in India and is a story of lost love and obsession.

This story engages on quite a lot of levels. It is based in the period building up to World War II, when a lot of people have not yet recovered from the trauma and loss of WWI and the beginning of the end of the Empire when many British families are leaving their quite privileged lives to return to a country changed forever. The story also covers the reasons that some people emigrated to England for a better life or to earn enough money to improve their families' lives in the country they have left behind - a topic that resonates with the present.

Maisie's interest in understanding the motivation of people's actions and the subsequent consequences makes this a much more interesting read than a pure mystery solving. The crimes in these books are always almost domestic in their scale - even though the consequences of them are terrible, often resulting in death.

Jacqueline Winspear reminds me of classic crime novelists such as Barbara Pym and Josephine Tey but also modern authors such as Sophie Hannah in her interest in the psychology of the crime and its participants. The author always provides a good read, but an interesting one and I always learn something new - but never feel that she is showing her knowledge off.

This is the tenth in the series featuring Maisie Dobbs.

Susan White, March 2014

New Reviews: Bourland, Dean, Dryden, Hill, Kelly, Meredith, Rickman, Seymour, Winspear

Here are 9 new reviews which have been added to the Euro Crime website today:

Earlier this week I reviewed on the blog, Fabrice Bourland's The Dream Killer of Paris tr. Morag Young the second in the Singleton and Trelawney series set in the 1930s;

Amanda Gillies reviews A M Dean's debut The Lost Library;

Lynn Harvey reviews Alex Dryden's thriller Death in Siberia the fourth in the Anna Resnikov series but Lynn says also works well as a standalone;

Maxine Clarke reviews Antonio Hill's The Summer of Dead Toys tr. Laura McGoughlin set in a steamy Barcelona [this will be in my top ten reads of 2012];

Geoff Jones reviews Jim Kelly's Death's Door, the fourth in his Valentine/Shaw series set in Norfolk [fans of his Dryden series please note that a new book in that series, Nightrise, has just come out];

Terry Halligan reviews the UK release of D E Meredith's debut Devoured which introduces Victorian forensic pathologists Hatton and Roumande;

Rich Westwood reviews Phil Rickman's The Heresy of Dr Dee the second in his Elizabethan series;

Terry also reviews E V Seymour's fourth 'Paul Tallis' thriller Resolution to Kill available on Kindle

and Susan White reviews the newest Maisie Dobbs from Jacqueline Winspear Elegy for Eddie - "a real joy".

Previous reviews can be found in the review archive.

Forthcoming titles can be found by author or date or by category, here along with releases by year.

New Reviews: McDermid, McGilloway, Masters, Meyer, Moffat, Rimington, Sherez, Williams, Winspear

Here are 9 new reviews which have been added to the Euro Crime website today:

Maxine Clarke reviews Val McDermid's The Vanishing Point, a standalone with a couple of brief cameos from an earlier book;

Lynn Harvey reviews the paperback release of Brian McGilloway's Little Girl Lost which she is pleased to see is the first in a new series;

Lizzie Hayes reviews Priscilla Masters's Smoke Alarm, the fourth in the Martha Gunn, Coroner, series;

Earlier this week Michelle Peckham reviewed Deon Meyer's Dead Before Dying tr Madeleine van Biljon and we also interviewed the author;

Amanda Gillies reviews G J Moffat's Protection, the fourth in this series which has takn a different (and more appealing to Amanda) direction;

Geoff Jones reviews the paperback release of Stella Rimington's Rip Tide;

Terry Halligan reviews Stav Sherez's A Dark Redemption which is the first in a new police series;

Terry also reviews Andrew Williams's The Poison Tide set in the First World War

and Susan White reviews Jacqueline Winspear's eighth Maisie Dobbs book, A Lesson in Secrets now out in paperback and a series Susan calls "a real treat".

Previous reviews can be found in the review archive.

Forthcoming titles can be found by author or date or by category, here along with releases by year.

New Reviews: Bolton, Bruen, Faletti, Graham, Haynes, Hill, Lackberg, Wahloo, Winspear

Competition: During May (closes 31st) you can win a copy of Tessa Harris's The Anatomist's Apprentice. The competition is open to UK residents. Answer the question and fill in the form here.

Here are this week's 9 new reviews:

Michelle Peckham is a bit disappointed in S J Bolton's fifth book, and second in the DC Lacey Flint series, Dead Scared, which is set in Cambridge;

Lynn Harvey is bowled over by Ken Bruen's Headstone the ninth in the Jack Taylor series set in Galway;

Laura Root reviews Giorgio Faletti's I am God, tr. Howard Curtis a standalone thriller set in New York City;

Terry Halligan reviews Eliza Graham's literary thriller, The History Room;

Amanda Gillies reviews Elizabeth Haynes' Revenge of the Tide (author of the highly praised Into the Darkest Corner);

Terry also reviews Suzette A Hill's A Load of Old Bones the first of five in the Francis Oughterard (plus his pets Maurice and Bouncer) series which now has a much overdue paperback release;

I review Camilla Lackberg's The Drowning, tr. Tiina Nunnally on audio book, the sixth in the Hedstrom-Falck series set in the coastal Swedish town of Fjallbacka;

Maxine Clarke reviews Per Wahloo's Murder on the Thirty-First Floor which has had a fresh translation by Sarah Death

and Susan White reviews Jacqueline Winspear's The Mapping of Love and Death, the seventh in the Maisie Dobbs series which has found a new UK home at Allison & Busby.

Previous reviews can be found in the review archive.

Forthcoming titles can be found by author or date or by category, here along with releases by year.

Publishing Deal - Jacqueline Winspear

In the Bookseller today it's been announced that Jacqueline Winspear is moving to Allison & Busby for her UK releases:

Allison & Busby has acquired two books by crime writer Jacqueline Winspear, with the author moving from John Murray to the independent.

[] bought UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) to...books seven and eight in the Maisie Dobbs series, set just after the First World War.

A&B will publish The Mapping of Love and Death, the seventh book in the Maisie Dobbs series, in hardback in November 2011, which will be followed by A Lesson in Secrets in March 2012.

Publishing Deal - Jacqueline Winspear

From Publishers Weekly, good news for Maisie Dobbs fans:

Two-time Agatha Award winner and NYT bestselling author Jacqueline Winspear's 9th and 10th novels in the series featuring psychologist and investigator MAISIE DOBBS, again to Jennifer Barth at Harper, in a major deal, by Amy Rennert at the Amy Rennert Agency.

Jacqueline Winspear's euro crime bibliography page is here. The seventh Maisie Dobbs - The Mapping of Love and Death - was published in the US in March. No UK date set, as far as I know.

Reviews: Cordy, Edwardson, Franklin, Sapper, White, Winspear

There are three competitions running this month; the prizes are: The Third Pig Detective Agency by Bob Burke, Relics of the Dead by Ariana Franklin and Blood Law by Steven Hague (some restrictions apply).

Here are this week's reviews, which stick a bit closer to home this time round:

Michelle Peckham reviews the mass market paperback edition of The Source by Michael Cordy summing it up as "one for the beach";

Maxine Clarke reviews the paperback edition of Frozen Tracks by Ake Edwardson writing that it "a satisfying read, both in terms of plot and characterisation";

Norman Price reviews Relics of the Dead by Ariana Franklin (apa Grave Goods in the US). He finds lead character Adelia "a beguiling heroine in a fascinating historical setting" (Win a copy this month);

Rik Shepherd is unimpressed by Bulldog Drummond by Sapper wondering why it's such a 'classic';

Amanda Gillies reports that it's business as usual in Neil White's strong Garrett/McGanity series, of which Last Rites is the third

and Terry Halligan praises Jacqueline Winspear highly for her latest Maisie Dobbs outing, Among the Mad.

Previous reviews can be found in the review archive and forthcoming titles can be found here.

So good a cover they used it thrice

I mentioned a while ago, two books by Jacqueline Winspear and Gerri Brightwell having the same photo on the cover but I've just come across an older book which also has the same cover, but in reverse to its successors - Anne Perry's Belgrave Square, republished in 1996:

Publishing Deal - Jacqueline Winspear

From Publishers Lunch:

New York Times bestselling author Jacqueline Winspear's seventh and eighth books in her series featuring psychologist and investigator Maisie Dobbs, following Jennifer Barth to Harper, for publication beginning in spring 2010, Amy Rennert at Amy Rennert Agency (NA).

TV rights to Sally Head Productions, producer of the Prime Suspect series, by Sean Daily at Hotchkiss and Associates, on behalf of Amy Rennert.

Jacqueline Winspear's bibliography is here (where there are also links to reviews and her website.)

Copycat Cover Syndrome strikes again

Kim from the excellent Crimethrutime website has tipped me off to a new author for my database - Gerri Brightwell who has recently published a Victorian mystery - The Dark Lantern - in the US. As soon as I saw it, I recognised the cover...



Read more about The Dark Lantern on the Random House website and my review of Maisie Dobbs for Over My Dead Body.

The next Maisie Dobbs...

Jacqueline Winspear will begin writing the fifth in her award winning Maisie Dobbs series on Nov. 1st. The title is An Incomplete Revenge. I've just been reading her latest blog post on her research trip to the French battlefields of WW1. There are some moving photos accompanying the post which be seen and read here.

I reviewed the first two in the series for www.overmydeadbody.com - Maisie Dobbs and Birds of a Feather and Sunnie Gill reviewed the fourth in the series, Messenger of Truth for Euro Crime.