This time, instead of treating soldiers at the front, they're rescuing civilians from fires and collapsed homes, maneuvering through rubble-strewn London as the bombs fall around them. 'The American Agent” opens with Maisie and her best friend, the wealthy and flamboyant Priscilla Partridge, returning to the same duty they performed in the last war: driving an ambulance. She researches each novel so carefully that the series could almost serve as a history of the United Kingdom in the first half of the 20th century. Winspear, who is British but has lived in the United States for almost 30 years, has said that the idea for the books grew out of hearing stories of her grandfather's experiences in World War I. Maisie's gentle, thoughtful nature is such a hallmark, though, that another book is being published in tandem with 'The American Agent.” Based on fan contributions to a Facebook group, it's a collection of quotes called 'What Would Maisie Do? Inspiration From the Pages of Maisie Dobbs.” Reading a Maisie Dobbs book is a little like spending time with an old friend you don't see often enough, if your old friend's gig is tracking down and capturing criminals.
Through it all she has solved sometimes harrowing cases with a mixture of intelligence, intuition, determination and compassion that makes her - and it's an odd compliment, I know - one of the most soothing characters in crime fiction. In the novels since, she has studied psychology and crime investigation with the eminent Maurice Blanche, lost her young fiance to his war injuries, worked with Blanche and then set up her own agency after his death, fallen in love again, married a man who changed her life and, again, suffered terrible loss. In the eponymous 2003 novel that introduced her, Maisie was a young nurse trying to save the lives of soldiers amid the carnage of World War I. In 'The American Agent,” the 14th novel about Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear, they'll follow the psychologist and investigator through the darkest days of the World War II Blitz on London as she investigates a murder with ominous political baggage. Maisie Dobbs' devoted readers have been through a lot with her.
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