Maisie Dobbs and the Austere Asylum

I just finished reading another historical mystery. This one is from the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear. 

By reading Maisie Dobbs I’m breaking all of my steadfast unwritten rules I have about reading mystery books.  The first book begins in 1929 and is set in London, England.  Maisie has gone into business for herself as a private investigator.  While talking to the caretaker of building that houses her office and interviewing a client, Maisie reflects a little on her past.  During the Great War, she used to be a nurse in France.  Her first client, she can tell hadn’t been a soldier during the war.  He asks her to investigate his wife’s comings and goings because he believes that she’s having an affair.

Maisie didn’t just fall into private investigating like the previously mentioned Molly Murphy, no she apprenticed under Maurice Blanche.  He ran his own detective agency and investigated matters for Europe’s crème de la crème.  Maurice retired from the business and Maisie is trying to make a go of it with her own independent business. 

The book is extremely well written and I felt almost as if I were watching an episode of Masterpiece Mystery on PBS instead of reading a mystery novel.  Again this is a very slow moving story, but I feel that there’s a reason for the slowness and that’s so the author can build the story. 

The story segues after Maisie has completed her first case to delve more into Maisie’s past experiences as a young girl and during WWI.  While I found the author’s segue interesting and heart wrenching at times.  At different points during this break in the mystery wondered how this had anything to do with the mystery itself and if the author’s other book in the series were the same way.  Hopefully, all will be explained at the end.  It was odd reading a mystery where for twelve chapters the theme shifted.  It was almost as if the author said, “And we interrupt this mystery novel for a dissertation of girlhood and a wartime romance.” 

Once leaving the “brief musical interlude,” I was happily thrown back into the mystery where it promptly deepened.  The rest of the book ran the course of typically mysteries, which was a relief.  The wartime interlude was somewhat explained during Maisie’s investigation into a farm where disfigured WWI vets lived. 

It should be interesting to see how this mystery series develops.  I don’t immediately read the next book in a series.  Instead, I prefer to read another book.  Maybe it’s so that I can sort of give my brain a break from the characters; I’m not sure?

My next read is the Molly Murphy mystery, Death of Riley. 

Review of Molly Murphy Mystery

I love finding new mystery books to read; finding a new mystery series is even better.  Growing up mysteries were my favorite genre and I’ve read a lot of them.  As an adult, I will still read mysteries that are for younger readers because sometimes I want something light to read.  Recently, I had learned that there’s a new American Girl Mystery out.  I’ve read most of the American Girl books and have enjoyed reading their line of mystery series', which focuses on a particular American Girl character that I like.  Recently, I discovered the American Girl books that feature Rebecca Rubin as the main character.  This series takes place around 1914 and Rebecca lives with her family on the Lower East Side in New York City.  American Girl published a mystery featuring Rebecca and the mystery she solved while staying at a summer camp.  I think I love this character because the time period reminds me of when my paternal grandmother, Virginia Womble was a girl.   

I went to the library to checkout the new Rebecca mystery, but it was checked out.  I was disappointed that I couldn’t read the book immediately, and put a hold on the next available copy.  Still, I was determined to read a mystery that took place around that same era. 

I’m not a big fan of historical fiction or books set in the British Isles, but I’m interested in learning about other eras or historical events.  There’s no better way to learn about history than to read historical fiction. 

 

I had joined a group on Ravelry that talked about mysteries and learned about some new series that I wouldn’t have known existed.  One was the Maisie Dobbs books by Jacqueline Winspear.  Unfortunately, I hadn’t written down the authors’ names, so I couldn’t readily look for the books I was interested in.  A co-worker told me that she likes to surf the shelves at libraries to find new books that might interest her.  I tried doing that with some very interesting results.

I started at the end of the mystery books because somehow I had remembered that the person who wrote the Maisie books’ last name began with a W.  I found one Maisie book, but it wasn’t the first one, so I didn’t get it.  However, I did put the first book in the Maisie series on hold.  Then I began my shelf surfing.  I wasn’t finding anything that interested me and was starting to feel a little disappointed.  Now, please keep in mind that I was at my local branch library and not at the main central library, where I’m almost positive that I would’ve had better luck.  I was very close to the beginning of the alphabet when I saw a series of books by Rhys Bowen.  I thought, “what an unusual name!”  I noticed that this author appeared to write many books set in the past and believed that I was on to something.  I scanned the line of Bowen’s books and then pulled one out and discovered that it belonged to the Molly Murphy Mystery series.  I searched through the books until I found the first one in this series.  They say don’t judge a book by it’s cover and I really tried not to.  The cover shows a sepia toned picture of Ellis Island with a line of immigrants trudging away from the building.  I read the inside flap and was even more intrigued.  Here appeared a very similar book to what I had originally been searching for.  Granted the main character was Irish Catholic and not Jewish as in the Rebecca books.  I decided to give Molly Murphy a shot. 

I said earlier that I don’t like books that take place in England or a similar locale.  This Molly book, titled Murphy’s Law, begins in Ireland.  Molly Murphy is running away from something—something bad.  She’s on a train to Belfast to escape an untold horrific event in her life.  Despite the setting of the beginning, I was hooked.  The mystery part of the book unfolds slowly—very slowly for some maybe.  I didn’t have an issue with the book’s pace because I loved reading about the early 1900’s era.  It takes place in 1901 to be exact just after the death of Queen Victoria.  Several chapters are set at Ellis Island where a murder occurs and Molly Murphy’s possible sighting of the killer.   After she’s finally allowed to leave Ellis Island, she lives in a squalid tenement with a few acquaintances.  The ending to the mystery seems rather too pat in my opinion, but it’s still a good read.  I liked how I was unable to predict who the killer was, but at the same time I don’t know if the author was really playing fair with the reader.  It’s still a free country, and authors can write mysteries any way they want.  My feeling is that Ms. Bowen wanted to write this series and she needed a lead in book to the series as a way to introduce the characters and so the murder that takes place is almost just a vehicle to the book.