‘The Comfort of Ghosts’ by Jacqueline Winspear

Published by Allison & Busby,
8 October 2024.
ISBN: 978-0-7490-3107-7

All good things must come to an end, and after a series running to eighteen titles, Jacqueline Winspear has decided it’s time to let Maisie Dobbs have a quiet life and spend more time with her family. That family has changed, grown and shrunk over the years, and Maisie herself has moved a long way from her beginnings as a thirteen-year-old under-parlourmaid in Chelstone Manor, the home of Lord Julian and Lady Rowan Compton. She’s now approaching middle age, and thanks to Lady Rowan’s interest in the little bookworm maid she found raiding the library in the small hours, Maisie is Cambridge-educated, and a skilled psychologist and investigator with a reputation that has spread far and wide.

At the beginning of this final chapter of her story, set in the aftermath of the Second World War, she discovers a group of youngsters squatting in the Compton family’s London house. Not only them, but a young man, disturbed and ill as a result of the appalling treatment he received as a prisoner of war in the far east. The young man turns out to be none other than Will, the son of Maisie’s business partner, Billy Beale.

And then there’s a body. Isn’t there always, in one of Maisie’s investigations? The young people are terrified; they witnessed something which can only be described as an assassination and are desperately afraid that the perpetrators are now looking for them.

Never one to settle for a peaceful existence, and capable as ever, Maisie sets out to solve the mystery surrounding the body, make the youngsters safe, begin the healing process for Will Beale, support Lady Rowan in the wake of her beloved husband’s death, and when she’s set wheels in motion for all that, seek out the baby boy born to the friend of her teenage years in Chelstone Manor, now grown to manhood. As she works her way through these seemingly endless tasks, she enlists the help of old and more recent friends, and the occasional adversary; and also finds herself revisiting her own past and laying some ghosts to rest.

Naturally, Maisie ensures everyone finds contentment and all the loose ends are neatly tied up before settling down to marriage and motherhood herself. But although she seems to be just as content as everyone else by the end of the story, there is always the lingering doubt that Maisie Dobbs will ever settle for an ordinary life. We’ll have to wait and see.
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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.