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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb sleuthing, 24 Feb 2008
For those who have not yet read the Maisie Dobbs series of novels, it is my advice not to start with this one, but with the first in the series entitled Maisie Dobbs and then read the next four in chronological order. For those already familiar with Maisie, and who already know the back story of our psychologist/private investigator, they certainly won't be disappointed with her latest exploits.
It is 1931, the country is deep in economic recession and Maisie is concerned about her business. She is therefore delighted to accept an assignment to investigate certain matters concerning a possible land purchase. Her investigations take her to rural Kent during the late summer hop picking season, to a village in which mysterious fires have taken place with alarming regularity and where the villagers - suspicious of everyone, particularly those involved in the hop picking (the families from London's East End and gypsies) - hide behind a wall of secrecy. As well as investigating the potential land purchase, Maisie is keen to discover the truth behind the fires.
As with Jacqueline Winspear's former Maisie Dobbs novel, this latest one is rich with period detail (a time when even a telephone was a luxury item) as well as instances of the gypsy language. This is the most exciting, atmospheric and enthralling of the Maisie Dobbs novels to date.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A very good mystery story and an enjoyable read, 17 Mar 2009
Maisie Dobbs is a private investigator and psychologist in early 1930s London.
She solves mysteries by a combination of intuition and gentle probing. Shades of Miss Marple perhaps - only younger and driving an MG.
The nuances of 1930s class and speech are well observed, though sometimes the use of modern psychological ideas such as focusing or visualisation jar with the 1930s setting.
All the problems Maisie deals with have their roots in the First World War. Its aftermath and effect on combatants and non-combatants alike is a theme running through all the Maisie Dobbs novels - an original idea.
Dramatisations of the novels would make ideal Sunday night viewing. I wonder if any production company has shown interest?
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9 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"So alone in her flat, Maisie Dobbs danced", 1 Mar 2008
In An Incomplete Revenge the plucky and inimitable Maisie Dobbs, a woman of no certain substance, returns to solve a series of petty crimes and inexplicable fires that have been plaguing the quaint town of Heronsdene in rural Kent. Maisie's investigation begins in London when she meets the dashing James Compton, head of the wealthy and lucrative Compton Corporation who informs her there's some "funny business" going on down at the Sandermere Estate.
The Compton Corporation wishes to place a purchase offer on the estate, but James is hearing doubts about the landowner, a man called Alfred Sandermere, the younger son of Lord Sandermere, who became heir to the estate when his older brother Henry was killed in the Great War. Apparently, Alfred has done nothing but draw funds from the estate, leaving it on the verge of bankruptcy. "It's essentially a fire sale," James tells Maisie, and there's nothing more than the Compton Corporation likes than "a clean transaction."
For sure the petty crime and vandalism in the house, and at the accompanying brickworks, are in danger of jeopardizing the sale. Even stranger is that all of the local villagers are keeping quiet about it with no one especially hurrying to point a finger. Trusted with the job of looking into matters to find out if there's anything amiss locally that would affect James' purchase of the Sandermere estate, Maisie travels to Heronsdene with her faithful cockney assistant Billy Beale whom she entrusts to do much of the initial legwork.
A center for the summer season of hop picking, Heronsdene, however, proves to anything but bucolic for Maisie, the initial drive through the village causing her to shiver with the hair on her back bristling with uncertainty. Soon enough, her fears are confirmed, and she soon develops a portrait of an area that is filled with a bitter dissent between James Sandermere, the local villagers, the incoming workers from London, and the gypsies who have come for the hop-picking season while they live in their whitewashed hopper huts on the edges of the estate.
Billy soon discovers that the locals are pretty quick to blame these gypsies for all the manner of ills that have plagued this community and even when he befriends Beulah Webb, the gypsy matriarch, he finds that "death is walking among the townsfolk of Heron," and there's nothing that Beulah or anyone else for that matter can do "to prevent such a fate."
When Maisie and Billy learn that two young London boys have recently been arrested, apparently for stealing from the Sandermere Estate, the case seems to be a forgone conclusion. But are the boys really guilty of breaking and entering? And if they are, how is the crime linked to the other events described to her by James Compton? And what of Heronsdene, with its constant dour mood, where the village folk are so tight-knit that they fail to report damage to their property by fire?
Soon Maisie finds herself caught up in a race against time to locate the stolen goods and find out who might have conducted the burglaries and the fires in the first place. But she also wonders about this commission from James Compton, the case made even more puzzling as James's mother, the Lady Rowan Compton is the original supporter and sponsor of Maisie's education and had initially suggested that her son contact Maisie regarding the latest purchase of the Sandermere land.
Author Jacqueline Winspear embeds her vividly rendered depression era story with a veritable witches brew of half-truths that have been hidden from view since the end of the Great War, with the townsfolk of Heronsdene constantly haunted and looking over their shoulders waiting for the ghosts to see them in the form of the three members of the Martin family, apparently killed in a sudden zeppelin raid in 1916. It is this event as much as the loss of the town's young men to the War that seems to have been a catalyst for a change of heart.
Even the chills of prejudice and the scars of battle can't escape the fiercely independent Maisie who in the course of the story must come to terms with her gypsy ancestry while also grappling with the tragic circumstances of her beloved beau Simon, whom she eternally holds within her heart, the wounds from the Great War taking his mind. She even worries about her dear father Frankie, who even after twenty-one years still mourns his wife, the ache of loneliness for her company perpetually reflected in his eyes.
With the clues eventually hanging on the origin of a rare violin, the surprising Dutch ancestry of the Martin family, and the insufferable Sandermere, who holds enormous power over the community and may even be embezzling his insurance company, the events of the novel twist and turn, time and again moving from London to Kent and then back to London as the path is eventually cleared for absolution by the villagers.
The author beautifully entrenches Maisie, and indeed all of her other characters, within the haunting the landscapes of 1931. Even with the labor lines growing, the factories closing, and the country in the grip of despair from the Great Depression, forgiveness seems to shine as Maisie's genuine optimism and hope provides the necessary elixir for all of the wounded souls she that encounters throughout the course of her investigation. Copyright Michael Leonard 2008.
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