21 March 2023.
ISBN: 978-0-74902913-5
If you were asked to sum up Jacqueline Winspear’s books in two words, you could do worse than choose elegant and leisurely. They’re a little like a swan gliding over the water, with plenty of frantic activity just under the surface. Her latest standalone is no exception.
It’s 1947, and England is recovering from a brutal war. The White Lady of the title is Miss Elinor White, who pursues a tranquil existence in a country village in Kent. She minds her own business and expects others to do the same – until she witnesses trouble come to the door of a young couple who work on a nearby farm. She has exchanged brief greetings with the wife, and feels constrained to help them out, especially since they have a small child who is likely to be caught up in any disturbance.
What no one in the village realizes is that the White Lady has hidden depths: she is a trained killer and former spy, whose extensive activities in two wars have earned her accolades, including the grace-and-favour cottage in which she lives. Elinor has maintained some of her wartime contacts and is well placed to help the young couple in their time of need.
Over the next few weeks her Good Samaritan nature means she tangles with a dangerous gangland family, and also revives some old friendships, not all of which are quite as she remembers. The 1947 strand is interleaved with accounts of how those friendships came about, and how Elinor herself became closely involved with resistance against the German invader in both world wars. Three stories unfold, but don’t be fooled by Winspear’s deceptively relaxed pace; there’s plenty of action, and more than a few surprises.
The characters carry the narrative along, some of them revealing concealed layers as matters progress. Elinor White herself has a core of steel, and talents no lady should admit to. I especially enjoyed Isabelle, the mysterious recruiter of resistance volunteers, Elsie, the feisty but underestimated sister of the gangland bosses, and Val, the canny police station secretary with a mind of her own and ambitions to match. Men may think they won both wars, but they had little idea of the lengths their valiant womenfolk would go to.
The settings, too, add their own kind of colour: the slightly sinister Belgian woodland which Elinor and her sister traverse to commit sabotage; the more friendly Kent countryside which allows Elinor to evade the bad guys; the hardship endured in occupied Europe, and later a war-scarred London.
Jacqueline Winspear knows how
to spin a good tale, paint a vivid background for it and people it with
characters the reader can warm to. Her long-running Maisie Dobbs series
garnered a host of fans; The White Lady may very well earn her a great
many more.
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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick
Jacqueline Winspear was born and raised in the county of Kent, England. Following higher education at the University of London's Institute of Education, Jacqueline worked in both general and academic publishing, in higher education and in marketing communications in the UK. She emigrated to the United States in 1990, and while working in business and as a personal / professional coach, Jacqueline embarked upon a life-long dream to be a writer. She is the author of sixteen books set in the period following the WW1 and featuring Maisie Dobbs.
https://jacquelinewinspear.com
Lynne Patrick has been a writer
ever since she could pick up a pen, and has enjoyed success with short stories,
reviews and feature journalism, but never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to
the dark side to become a publisher for a few years and is proud to have
launched several careers which are now burgeoning. She lives in Oxfordshire in
a house groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction.
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