The mission places her undercover as a professor at Cambridge in order to investigate the troubling emergence of the Nazi party.
Jacqueline Winspear Sends Maisie Undercover
There's nothing quite like the power of hindsight to make us feel like everything ought to be obvious, and one of the more prominent examples of this is the Nazi Party. Though I'd like to think we can all agree about its obviously evil nature, back in the moment it wasn't this obvious to everybody. In Jacqueline Winspear's A Lesson in Secrets, Maisie Dobbs embarks on the early invisible frontline against them.
The story in the eighth novel in the Maisie Dobbs Series takes us to 1932, when The Great Depression was hanging above the world like Damocles' sword, very few being spared its wrath. Many countries dealt with this issue in their own ways, and in Germany it led to the emergence of the Nazi Party, whose tendrils often looked to spread beyond their point of origin.
Maisie Dobbs' talents are, at this stage, renowned enough to earn herself a special assignment from none other than the British Secret Service, putting her in the service of His Majesty's government. Her mission is rather simple: pose as an undercover lecturer at a private college in Cambridge, and monitor any activities not in the interest of The State.
What starts as an ordinary and potentially boring outing quickly changes tone when the college's pacifist founder is murdered, with the signs and clues somehow connecting him to the Nazi Party. What's worse, this only promises to be the beginning of a gruesome series of events, one only Maisie is in the right position to stop.
From there on out, she gets pulled into a dark, vast and sinister web of espionage, deceit, lies, murder, politics, raising the stakes of her investigation high enough to be considered a matter of national safety. While she might not have what it takes to vanquish the Nazi Party, she still has a chance of saving Britain's shores from it.
The Calm Mystery in A Lesson in Secrets
I think it's no secret now our attention spans have been dwindling down and down over the past few decades, especially with the emergence of increasingly-instantaneous entertainment tools. Books, which by their very nature encourage longer attention spans, have also paradoxically tried to follow in this vein.
When it comes to mysteries, most of them are given to us in the shape of thrillers with fast-moving and short chapters, with little attention paid to anything but moving the investigation forward. While there is nothing wrong with the existence of these stories and they certainly have their place in literature, they've made me appreciate novels like this one which aren't afraid to take their time.
Indeed, Winspear isn't afraid of losing the reader's attention halfway through every page like many authors are these days. On the contrary, it felt to me like a big part of her goal was to create a calm and soothing atmosphere through which we could leisurely travel while unravelling the investigative yarn and trying to piece it all together.
In my opinion, one of the primary reasons Winspear's slower pace works is, to put it quite simply, the high quality of her prose. Her writing is impeccable, having been further sharpened and refined with each additional book in this mystery series. The descriptions are always tremendously evocative and make adept use of all the reader's senses, imagination and emotions.
I must also add, the book's calm atmosphere and pace don't automatically mean the plot moves along slowly and tediously. On the contrary, it always feels like there are small developments occurring here and there between the bigger ones, and on the whole this creates a sense of constant motion which, in my opinion, made this novel into what people refer to as a “page-turner”.
The Reality of History
While the mystery and its investigation have always taken the centre stage in the Maisie Dobbs novels, they've also always carried a very strong historical aspect with them as well. As you can see in this case, the primary historical aspects put on display are The Great Depression and the emergence of the Nazi Party.
Once again, I had the impression Winspear outdid herself in relation to the previous novel, showing a profound depth of understanding of the times, consequently showing the tremendous amount of research she has done.
Whereas most stories with historical characteristics will seek to shower their readers with disembodied facts more often than not, Winspear prefers to actually demonstrate them happening to her characters. In other words, through the eyes of Maisie we witness the ravages of The Great Depression, and as she watches the suffering it caused to the world, so do we.
While I would say on the whole the novel is quite classy and doesn't have any gratuitous nor exploitative elements, there are, as you might expect, some rather dark and heavy themes relating to the possibly-unprecedented amount of terror the world experienced in the first half of the 20th century. I'm truly glad there are still many set on not allowing that time to be forgotten.
What's more, the author also manages to weave many of the historical elements into her fictional plot and murder mystery, having them serve a double function in addition to being windows into the past. In my humble opinion, Jacqueline Winspear is one of the very best authors today at taking this type of approach.
The Final Verdict
A Lesson in Secrets by Jacqueline Winspear is yet another superb entry into the Maisie Dobbs Series, presenting a calm, intelligent and extremely enjoyable historical mystery set during one of the early 20th century's most turbulent time periods.
If you've enjoyed the series up until now, or are in search of a quality historical mystery to relax with, then I strongly recommend you give this novel a shot.
 | Jacqueline WinspearPersonal site Jacqueline Winspear is a mystery author hailing from the United Kingdom, best-known for writing the Maisie Dobbs Series, taking place after WWI and following the titular inspector's investigations across over fourteen books at this point. The first novel in the series, Maisie Dobbs, earned her numerous award nominations, Such as the Edgar Award for Best Novel and the Agatha Award for Best First Novel. Additionally, she was also a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in 2015. |
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