Messenger of Truth

I am a fan of Jacqueline Winspear a British author now living in Northern California. She is the creator of the series of 16 mystery novels feature as her heroine a young lady named Maisie Dobbs. She was born poor but has been befriended by aristocrats who have sensed her brilliance and helped her advance in her detecting career. In this fourth book in the Maisie Dobbs series the year is 1931. Maisie is contacted by a wealthy woman called Georginia
Bassington Hope. Miss Hope is a famous writer about her exploits covering the British World War I trench warfare experience. She believes her brother Nick, a famous painter, was murdered when he fell from a painting scaffold to his death. Maisie takes the case. She also has to deal with the death of her assistant’s daughter due to illness. The family of Billie is suffering from the poverty and despair of the early years of the Great Depression. Masie sets to work solving the case of Nick as she visits a seaside town where the artist had been living in a converted railroad car home. She meets his friends and his jazz playing brother Harry and an older sister of Georgy whose husband was killed in World War I. The victim’s father and mother are old bohemians who are very artistic. A good mix of characters and well drawn characters make this a good read.

This will be my last date with Maisie Dobbs. She has some irritating habits, like zenning-out to discover plot twists. Too much hand wrenching, introspection, and stoicism. If there were even a slight bit of humor to lighten the rigid personality, and situations, I might try again. But, alas…..

I actually began these books while awaiting the next Her Royal Spyness romp, which are great fun to read, and a smart main character you can’t help but love.

Maisie Dobb is tedious. I think I would like the Billy Beale Character, but he is merely a 2 dimensional plot twist to add to Maisie’s “depth”, unsuccessfully.

I tried the Maggie Hope stories, but they were thinly veiled Progressive propaganda, and not well researched.

So, now I’ll just have to wait.

I enjoyed the first 3 books in the series because they provided interesting details about Maisies life below and above stairs, her training with her mentor and what she learned about human nature and investigations. In Messenger of Truth, Maisie doesnt really learn anythingor share her observations onthe human heart. In her treatment of her longtime suitor, Maisie comes across as somewhat callous. And finally, in previous books, we see Maisie interacting with friends and colorful characters; none of the subordinate characters (except Billy) are in the least agreeable or likeable. I plodded through the book on the strength of the previous 3. Fingers crossed that book 4 isnt so dull.

Maisie Dobbs private practice as a psychologist and investigator is taking off when she receives a curious assignment from a wealthy journalist celebrated for her front-line reporting in World War I. Georgina Bassington-Hope explains that her twin brother has died, and she is convinced he has been murdered despite the police and the coroners conviction that his death was an accident. She wants Maisie to dig deeply and find the truth. Over the following weeks, Maisies life will be dominated by this unsettling case.

A complex intellectual puzzle

Georginas brother, Nick, was a brilliant painter whose work was beginning to earn him a fortune when he tumbled from a scaffold where he was about to hang his masterpiece. Maisie finds it difficult to obtain evidence that his death was anything but accidental: the case is a complex intellectual puzzle. Her thoroughness, obsessive attention to detail, and refusal to take anything at face value eventually lead Maisie into dark corners where the truth eventually emerges. The story is unsettling but it lacks the repeated violence of so much other detective fiction. Maisie works with her brains, not her fists.

Class resentment in Depression-era England

Messenger of Truth, the fourth in Jacqueline Winspears venerable series of Maisie Dobbs novels, is set in the closing days of 1930 and the early months of 1931. With the terrors of World War I still vivid in every mind, the Depression is in full force. Unemployment is rampant, and the fascist politician Oswald Mosley is gaining a following with his demagogic message. The ostentatious wealth of Georginas family contrasts with the desperation all around. Maisies class awareness rises as the gross inequities weigh on her more and more heavily. Having been born and raised close to the edge of poverty, Maisie has gained an education only through the lucky accident that the aristocratic family that employed her in service has given her opportunities for education and advancement closed to millions of others.

Maisie Dobbs was born poor, but has moved up into different circles, and she is now working as a psychologist and investigator. But all is not rosy in her life: she has moved away from her former partnership with her mentor, she is unable to commit to her relationship with a young doctor, and she feels that she is only content when she is lost in her work. Set in London during the years after World War I, this mystery shines a light on the disparity between the wealthy and the poor, especially the men and women battered and broken by that war.
In this novel, Maisie has been hired by a famous writer to investigate the death of her twin brother, an artist of some renown who paints of war and its consequences. His death, which occurred the day before the unveiling of his new works, is judged to be an accident by the police, but the sister refuses to accept this judgement. This is a fine mystery, well plotted, nicely developed characters, richly described settings. But it is more than that: it is also an examination of how brave, but battered veterans of the battlefields work to understand and move beyond its memories.

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