Leaving Everything Most Loved

London, July 1933. The Great Depression is underway in full force. Adolf Hitler has seized power in Germany, and Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists is striking fear into the hearts of the Establishment. But Maisie Dobbs has problems of her own. Now 36, the successful “psychologist and investigator” is restless. Having grown up poor, she is uncomfortable with the great fortune willed to her by her late mentor, Dr. Maurice Blanche, and resisting the entreaties of her wealthy and aristocratic live-in lover, James Compton, to close her practice and become his wife. Maisie wants to leave it all behind and travel to India in Maurice’s footsteps. All that holds her back are her aging father, Frankie Dobbs, and the two employees who depend on her, Billy Beale and Sandra Tapley. Thus the scene is set inLeaving Everything Most Loved,the 10th volume in Jacqueline Winspear’s engrossing Maisie Dobbs series.

Maisie Dobbs explores the world of Indian immigrants

While Maisie teeters on the edge of indecision, a call from Detective Inspector Caldwell at Scotland Yard draws her back into the grim reality of Depression-era London. A beautiful young Indian immigrant, Usha Pramal, has been brutally murdered, and Scotland Yard’s investigation has hit a wall. As Maisie sets out on the case, she findsthe elusive truth about Usha’s death may lie somewhere in India in the time and circumstances before the young woman’s departure for England. And a separate case Maisie had assigned to Billy, her assistant, may somehow prove to be closely related to her murder investigation.

Class dynamics in Depression-era England

As in the nine novels that precede it in the series,Leaving Everything Most Lovedis a gripping novel of suspense. Yet the greatest strength Jacqueline Winspear brings to her work is her fine-tuned understanding of class dynamics in England between the two world wars. For example, here is Maisie uncomfortably reflecting on how far she’s come in life:

“How different now was her life from that of the girl who left a small house in Lambeth to work at a grand mansion in Belgravia. Ebury Place. She was, to all intents and purposes, mistress of that same house now, yet at once she remembered the feelings that caused her to weep as she made her way towards the kitchen entrance on a blustery day so long ago. She had just turned thirteen, still grieving the loss of her mother, when she left her father’s house that morning.” Her years with Lord Compton and his family unexpectedly put her on the path to education and success, but she had never quite reconciled herself to leaping across the class gap that for millions of others was impassable.

Though there is violence in the Maisie Dobbs novels, it serves only to move the story forward. None of it is gratuitous or disturbing, as is the case in so many (often American) detective novels.

I decided to go ahead and read the last Jacqueline Winspear book that I had on Kindle just to get it out of my queue. It had been there for a long time and I was tired of seeing it. It turns out that this entry marks something of an end to one chapter of Maisie Dobbs’ life and so it is a good “ending,” a good place for me to pause in my reading of the Dobbs saga and move on to something else for a while.

Dobbs is dissatisfied with her life. She is a successful businesswoman, fabulously wealthy thanks to a bequest from her mentor, has a good and caring (and rich) man as a lover, and is well-respected everywhere she goes. In short, everyone loves Maisie, so why wouldn’t she be discontented? Yeah, right!

This is actually one of the things that annoys me about this character. She really seems to have little actual depth of understanding of just how lucky she is. Oh, she gives lip service to such understanding, but it seems about paper-thin depth. Moreover, she never really faces any disapproval from society about her life or any major obstacles to her achieving her aims. Yes, everyone loves Maisie. It strains credulity.

Maisie’s discontent this time is rooted in the fact that she doesn’t really want to get married, although her lover is pressing her to do so, and she wants to travel, to visit distant lands as her mentor Maurice did. To do that would mean closing down her detective agency, but then what would become of her two employees? Not to worry! Everything falls magically into place, as it always does in the world of Maisie Dobbs.

Maisie decides that she wants to go to India, and what do you know? Just a couple of months before, an Indian woman living in London was murdered. The police have been unsuccessful in solving the crime. Indeed, they don’t seem to have expended much effort on it. As Inspector Caldwell admits to Maisie, no one was pressing them for a solution.

Then the woman’s brother shows up. He has traveled from India to light a fire under the investigation and find out what happened to his sister. Maisie Dobbs’ name was given to him by one of his fellow countrymen who had been another mentor and adviser to Maisie. When he speaks to Caldwell, the police agree to contract with Maisie to carry on the investigation and try to bring some justice to the dead woman.

It turns out to be a complicated mystery that has roots stretching all the way back to India, and soon it becomes even more complicated when a friend of the murdered woman is also killed in the same manner as the first. As Maisie becomes more deeply involved in the investigation, she is more and more intrigued by Indian culture and by the Indians that she meets in the course of her inquiries, all of which makes her more definite than ever that she wants to travel to that exotic land.

But first she has to wrap up her investigation.

She does, of course, with minimal help this time from her assistant Billy Beale who is still suffering from the injuries that he sustained in Elegy for Eddie or her secretary Sandra who is slowly emerging from her widow’s shell and taking an interest in life once again.

So, everything gets tied up in a neat little bow. The villain is arrested, but he isn’t really such a villain, even though he has murdered two women. He’s a victim, too.

The lives of everyone she cares about have now fallen into place, just as Maisie would have wanted, so she is free to move on to her own future. That moving on proceeds slowly as we are treated to a long summing up of Maisie’s life so far and as she looks forward to her trip to India. But finally, she’s on the boat and on her way.

It’s a little difficult to see just where Winspear is going with this, but there are several more entries in the series, so undoubtedly, she has a plan. I think it would be interesting to see, just once, something not work out exactly as Maisie wants it to. Maybe the ship sinks on the way to India, or she loses all her money and is left with nothing but her native resources, or her lover James finally gets fed up with her dithering and marries that dashing young aviatrix with whom he seems to have a lot in common. Well, I can dream, can’t I?

This book I thought was the best one in the Maisie Dobbs series. So far I have read all of them, and in order. What I really enjoyed about this book was the character development. So many of the other books in the series focused on events as well as character development. This book was focused on a murder as all of them are, however the author focused more on the restlessness of Maisie and how Maisie needed to make a significant change in her life. Everything also seemed to come together for Maisie by the end of the book but the end of this book is just the beginning of what comes next for her.

I have loved the Maisie Dobbs series, however this book and Elegy for Eddie became weighed down with too much teenage angst. Maisie is too old , too experienced, and too well educated to be so lost about who she is and what she wants. Maisie is very selfish on her relationship with James, I was reminded of the old Supreme’s song, You Keep Me Hanging On! Always a good read, I am tired of her self pity. I am also incredulous that she has only made one friend her entire life. No one from the old neighborhood? No other nurse from France or later? No one from University? Most warm and caring people make friends as they go through life, especially during school and war.

Considering how many books this author has written I was surprised at these obvious basic errors:

“That is all I ask, for my wife and I to be allowed to plough our land and sow our seeds of faith.

Winspear, Jacqueline. Leaving Everything Most Loved: (p. 234). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

‘She smiled upon the retriever, who was now laying in front of the children, somewhat less on guard, but still with his eyes on Maisie’.

Winspear, Jacqueline. Leaving Everything Most Loved: (p. 239). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

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