Maisie Dobbs
- Jacqueline Winspear
My rating: 1.5 of 5 stars
The Maisie Dobbs series was highly recommended in my reading group as a wonderful cozy mystery and as a novel with a strong female lead. It also features amongst the best rated cozy mysteries in Goodreads lists. Yet I found it severely lacking in all the aspects it was recommended for, and more. I won’t say I hated it (okay, nearly there), but found it boring and over-hyped.
I could not muster up any admiration, or even liking, for the character of the protagonist Maisie. Yes, she is very intellectual and works hard, but otherwise there is not much initiative on her part. Both her education and business result from the unending generosity of others (there is no use finding logic in fiction, particularly light books as these, but how did a person who is deeply involved in matter of international importance and his own social work, find hours every week for years to work with one protege?). There is no reason why everyone should extend unconditional love and support towards her; in fact, she does not seem to suffer any setback except possibly that of her “lowly” birth, which is soon overcome through the largesse of the family she works for. She has a rather superior attitude, the prime example of which is dictating her very first client on the course of action he must take once she has completed the investigation. And this holier-than-though attitude comes across as truly hypocritical in light of the event revealed at the end (spoiler later).
The mystery was non-existent, the sleuthing was trivial and whatever risk was involved was not taken by Maisie. A lot of her conclusions are drawn from intuition rather than deductive reasoning, and the way she takes on the culprit at the climax is just unbelievable (both in stupidity and in outcome).
A short way into the book, we are taken into a lengthy detour building up the background of the character, in excruciating and uninteresting detail. It made me lose whatever interest I might have had in the mystery. Throughout the book, her mentor’s snippets of wisdom are related as part of her thought process … “Maurice said/taught …”, which I found annoying rather than insightful. The author attempted to conjure up a big surprise at the end, which I found pathetic – when an author drags the mystery of an upcoming surprise through the whole book, I just lose patience and interest … if you want to surprise, just deliver it without continuously telling that there is something big coming up. The event itself led me to further dislike the character of Maisie.
.
.
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We learn that Simon is alive
though completely mentally impaired, due to the bomb explosion in the
red cross tent. Maisie was deeply in love with Simon (so she tells us)
who was completely devoted to her. Yet, she did not visit him in the
intervening 12 or 14 years, giving a two-line explanation that she could
not bear to lose the memory of him as he was.
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