—Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air, on Maisie Dobbs
Maisie Dobbs got her start as a maid in an aristocratic London household when she was thirteen. Her employer, suffragette Lady Rowan Compton, soon became her patron, taking the remarkably bright youngster under her wing. Lady Rowan's friend, Maurice Blanche, often retained as an investigator by the European elite, recognized Maisie’s intuitive gifts and helped her earn admission to the prestigious Girton College in Cambridge, where Maisie planned to complete her education.
The outbreak of war changed everything. Maisie trained as a nurse, then left for France to serve at the Front, where she found—and lost—an important part of herself. Ten years after the Armistice, in the spring of 1929, Maisie sets out on her own as a private investigator, one who has learned that coincidences are meaningful, and truth elusive. Her very first case involves suspected infidelity but reveals something very different.
In the aftermath of the Great War, a former officer has founded a working farm known as The Retreat, that acts as a convalescent refuge for ex-soldiers too shattered to resume normal life. When Fate brings Maisie a second case involving The Retreat, she must finally confront the ghost that has haunted her for over a decade.
—Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air, on Maisie Dobbs
Maisie Dobbs got her start as a maid in an aristocratic London household when she was thirteen. Her employer, suffragette Lady Rowan Compton, soon became her patron, taking the remarkably bright youngster under her wing. Lady Rowan's friend, Maurice Blanche, often retained as an investigator by the European elite, recognized Maisie’s intuitive gifts and helped her earn admission to the prestigious Girton College in Cambridge, where Maisie planned to complete her education.
The outbreak of war changed everything. Maisie trained as a nurse, then left for France to serve at the Front, where she found—and lost—an important part of herself. Ten years after the Armistice, in the spring of 1929, Maisie sets out on her own as a private investigator, one who has learned that coincidences are meaningful, and truth elusive. Her very first case involves suspected infidelity but reveals something very different.
In the aftermath of the Great War, a former officer has founded a working farm known as The Retreat, that acts as a convalescent refuge for ex-soldiers too shattered to resume normal life. When Fate brings Maisie a second case involving The Retreat, she must finally confront the ghost that has haunted her for over a decade.
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Overview
—Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air, on Maisie Dobbs
Maisie Dobbs got her start as a maid in an aristocratic London household when she was thirteen. Her employer, suffragette Lady Rowan Compton, soon became her patron, taking the remarkably bright youngster under her wing. Lady Rowan's friend, Maurice Blanche, often retained as an investigator by the European elite, recognized Maisie’s intuitive gifts and helped her earn admission to the prestigious Girton College in Cambridge, where Maisie planned to complete her education.
The outbreak of war changed everything. Maisie trained as a nurse, then left for France to serve at the Front, where she found—and lost—an important part of herself. Ten years after the Armistice, in the spring of 1929, Maisie sets out on her own as a private investigator, one who has learned that coincidences are meaningful, and truth elusive. Her very first case involves suspected infidelity but reveals something very different.
In the aftermath of the Great War, a former officer has founded a working farm known as The Retreat, that acts as a convalescent refuge for ex-soldiers too shattered to resume normal life. When Fate brings Maisie a second case involving The Retreat, she must finally confront the ghost that has haunted her for over a decade.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781569477229 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Soho Press, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2003 |
| Series: | Maisie Dobbs Series |
| Sold by: | Penguin Random House Publisher Services |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 294 |
| Sales rank: | 4,842 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Hometown:
Ojai, CaliforniaDate of Birth:
April 30, 1955Place of Birth:
Weald of Kent, EnglandEducation:
The University of London¿s Institute of EducationWebsite:
http://www.jacquelinewinspear.comRead an Excerpt
SPRING 1929
CHAPTER ONE
Even if she hadn’t been the last person to walk through the turnstile at Warren Street tube station, Jack Barker would have noticed the tall, slender woman in the navy blue, thigh-length jacket with a matching pleated skirt short enough to reveal a well-turned ankle. She had what his old mother would have called “bearing.” A way of walking, with her shoulders back and head held high, as she pulled on her black gloves while managing to hold on to a somewhat battered black document case.
“Old money,” muttered Jack to himself. “Stuck-up piece of nonsense.”
Jack expected the woman to pass him by, so he stamped his feet in a vain attempt to banish the sharp needles of cold creeping up through his hobnailed boots. He fanned a half dozen copies of the Daily Express over one arm, anticipating a taxi-cab screeching to a halt and a hand reaching out with the requisite coins.
“Oh, stop—may I have an Express please, love?” appealed a voice as smooth as spooned treacle.
The newspaper vendor looked up slowly, straight into eyes the color of midnight in summer, an intense shade that seemed to him to be darker than blue. She held out her money.
“O’ course, miss, ’ere you are. Bit nippy this morning, innit?”
She smiled, and as she took the paper from him before turning to walk away, she replied, “Not half. It’s brass monkey weather; better get yourself a nice cuppa before too long.”
Jack couldn’t have told you why he watched the woman walk all the way down Warren Street toward Fitzroy Square. But he did know one thing: She might have bearing, but from the familiar way she spoke to him, she certainly wasn’t from old money.
At the end of Warren Street, Maisie Dobbs stopped in front of the black front door of a somewhat rundown Georgian terraced house, tucked the Daily Express under her left arm, carefully opened her document case, and took out an envelope containing a letter from her landlord and two keys. The letter instructed her to give the outside door a good shove after turning the key in the lock, to light the gas lamp at the base of the stairs carefully, to mind the top step of the first flight of stairs—which needed to be looked at—and to remember to lock her own door before leaving in the evening. The
letter also told her that Billy Beale, the caretaker, would put up her nameplate on the outside door if she liked or, it suggested, perhaps she would prefer to remain anonymous.
Maisie grinned. I need the business, she said to herself. I’m not here to remain anonymous.
Maisie suspected that Mr. Sharp, the landlord, was unlikely to live up to his name, and that he would pose questions with obvious answers each time they met. However, his directions were apt: The door did indeed need a shove, but the gas lamp, once lit, hardly dented the musky darkness of the stairwell. Clearly there were some things that needed to be changed, but all in good time. For the moment Maisie had work to do, even if she had no actual cases to work on.
Minding the top step, Maisie turned right on the landing and headed straight for the brown painted door on the left, the one with a frosted glass window and a To Let sign hanging from the doorknob. She removed the sign, put the key into the lock, opened the door, and took a deep breath before stepping into her new office. It was a single room with a gas fire, a gas lamp on each wall, and one sash window with a view of the building across the street and the rooftops beyond. There was an oak desk with a matching chair of dubious stability, and an old filing cabinet to the right of the window.
Lady Rowan Compton, her patron and former employer, had been correct; Warren Street wasn’t a particularly salubrious area. But if she played her cards right, Maisie could afford the rent and have some money left over from the sum she had allowed herself to take from her savings. She didn’t want a fancy office, but she didn’t want an out-and-out dump either. No, she wanted something in the middle, something for everyone, something central, but then again not in the thick of things. Maisie felt a certain comfort in this small corner of Bloomsbury. They said that you could sit down to tea with just about anyone around Fitzroy Square, and dine with a countess and a carpenter at the same table, with both of them at ease in the company. Yes, Warren Street would be good for now. The tricky thing was going to be the nameplate. She still hadn’t solved the problem of the nameplate.
As Lady Rowan had asked, “So, my dear, what will you call yourself? I mean, we all know what you do, but what will be your trade name? You can hardly state the obvious. ‘Finds missing people, dead or alive, even when it’s themselves they are looking for’ really doesn’t cut the mustard. We have to think of something succinct, something that draws upon your unique talents.”
“I was thinking of ‘Discreet Investigations,’ Lady Rowan. What do you think?”
“But that doesn’t tell anyone about how you use your mind, my dear—what you actually do.”
“It’s not really my mind I’m using, it’s other people’s. I just ask the questions.”
“Poppycock! What about ‘Discreet Cerebral Investigations’?”
Maisie smiled at Lady Rowan, raising an eyebrow in mock dismay at the older woman’s suggestion. She was at ease, seated in front of the fireplace in her former employer’s library, a fireplace she had once cleaned with the raw, housework-roughened hands of a maid in service.
“No, I’m not a brain surgeon. I’m going to think about it for a bit, Lady Rowan. I want to get it right.”
The gray-haired aristocrat leaned over and patted Maisie on the knee. “I’m sure that whatever you choose, you will do very well, my dear. Very well indeed.”
So it was that when Billy Beale, the caretaker, knocked on the door one week after Maisie moved into the Warren Street office, asking if there was a nameplate to put up at the front door, Maisie handed him a brass plate bearing the words “M. Dobbs. Trade and Personal Investigations.”
“Where do you want it, miss? Left of the door or right of the door?”
He turned his head very slightly to one side as he addressed her. Billy was about thirty years old, just under six feet tall, muscular and strong, with hair the color of sun-burnished wheat. He seemed agile, but worked hard to disguise a limp that Maisie had noticed immediately.
“Where are the other names situated?”
“On the left, miss, but I wouldn’t put it there if I were you.”
“Oh, and why not, Mr. Beale?”
“Billy. You can call me Billy. Well, people don’t really look to the left, do they? Not when they’re using the doorknob, which is on the right. That’s where the eyes immediately go when they walk up them steps, first to that lion’s ’ead door knocker, then to the knob, which is on the right. Best ’ave the plate on the right. That’s if you want their business.”
“Well, Mr. Beale, let’s have the plate on the right. Thank you.”
“Billy, miss. You can call me Billy.”
Billy Beale went to fit the brass nameplate. Maisie sighed deeply and rubbed her neck at the place where worry always sat when it was making itself at home.
“Miss . . .”
Billy poked his head around the door, tentatively knocking at the glass as he removed his flat cap.
“What is it, Mr. Beale?”
“Billy, miss. Miss, can I have a quick word?”
“Yes, come in. What is it?”
“Miss, I wonder if I might ask a question? Personal, like.” Billy continued without waiting for an answer. “Was you a nurse? At a casualty clearing station? Outside of Bailleul?”
Maisie felt a strong stab of emotion, and instinctively put her right hand to her chest, but her demeanor and words were calm.
“Yes. Yes, I was.”
“I knew it!” said Billy, slapping his cap across his knee. “I just knew it the minute I saw those eyes. That’s all I remember, after they brought me in. Them eyes of yours, miss. Doctor said to concentrate on looking at something while ’e worked on me leg. So I looked at your eyes, miss. You and ’im saved my leg. Full of shrapnel, but you did it, didn’t you? What was ’is name?”
For a moment, Maisie’s throat was paralyzed. Then she swallowed hard. “Simon Lynch. Captain Simon Lynch. That must be who you mean.”
“I never forgot you, miss. Never. Saved my life, you did.”
Maisie nodded, endeavoring to keep her memories relegated to the place she had assigned them in her heart, to be taken out only when she allowed.
“Well, miss. Anything you ever want doing, you just ’oller. I’m your man. Stroke of luck, meeting up with you again, innit? Wait till I tell the missus. You want anything done, you call me. Anything.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much. I’ll holler if I need anything. Oh, and Mr. . . . Billy, thank you for taking care of the sign.”
Billy Beale blushed and nodded, covered his burnished hair with his cap, and left the office.
Lucky, thought Maisie. Except for the war, I’ve had a lucky life so far. She sat down on the dubious oak chair, slipped off her shoes and rubbed at her feet. Feet that still felt the cold and wet and filth and blood of France. Feet that hadn’t felt warm in twelve years, since 1917.
She remembered Simon, in another life, it seemed now, sitting under a tree on the South Downs in Sussex. They had been on leave at the same time, not a miracle of course, but difficult to arrange, unless you had connections where connections counted. It was a warm day, but not one that took them entirely away from the fighting, for they could still hear the deep echo of battlefield cannonade from the other side of the English Channel, a menacing sound not diminished by the intervening expanse of land and sea. Maisie had complained then that the damp of France would never leave her, and Simon, smiling, had pulled off her walking shoes to rub warmth into her feet.
“Goodness, woman, how can anyone be that cold and not be dead?”
They both laughed, and then fell silent. Death, in such times, was not a laughing matter.
What People are Saying About This
"[A] deft debut novel... Romantic readers sensing a story-within-a-story won’t be disappointed. But first they must be prepared to be astonished at the sensitivity and wisdom with which Maisie resolves her first professional assignment." —The New York Times
"The reader familiar with Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency... might think of Maisie Dobbs as its British counterpart.... Winspear, who intends to write a series featuring Maisie Dobbs, has created a winning character about whom readers will want to read more." —The Associated Press
"[Maisie Dobbs] catches the sorrow of a lost generation in the character of one exceptional woman." —The Chicago Tribune
Reading Group Guide
INTRODUCTION
At first glance, Maisie Dobbs's inaugural case as a private investigator looks dreadfully routine: Christopher Davenham, whose wife has been making unexplained weekday excursions from their London home, has employed Maisie to discover whether he is being betrayed. However, Maisie recalls the advice of her enigmatic mentor, Maurice Blanche, that "the extraordinary hides behind the camouflage of the ordinary." Events prove Maurice correct, as the trail of Davenham's wife leads Maisie to a mysterious, carefully guarded home for disabled World War I veterans—and toward a painful confrontation with her own haunting past. Set in England and France in the 1910s and 1920s, Maisie Dobbs steps beyond the conventional confines of a mystery novel by telling the story of a brave, brilliant young woman who rises from her working-class origins to study at Cambridge and earn a place as a respected detective. In addition, with astonishing subtlety and sympathy, the novel relives the heroic struggles and devastating losses of those who strove and suffered in the so-called War to End All Wars.
For her re-creation of England in the early decades of the last century, Jacqueline Winspear has drawn upon the experiences and stories of her own family. She has also surrounded her cool but compassionate heroine with a host of meticulously created supporting characters: Simon Lynch, the idealistic young doctor whose sense of humane duty draws him toward an unimaginable fate; Enid, a red-haired servant-girl whose fiery spirit and romantic dreams risk being crushed by class prejudice; Frankie Dobbs, who yearns for his daughter to rise and flourish but fears losing her to a social and intellectual world he cannot comprehend; and Maurice, who shapes Maisie's growing mind in his own image. Above all, however, Winspear recaptures the character of an age—a time when venerable social hierarchies began to totter, when the innocent optimism of youth gave way to the bitter truths of experience, and when shell-shocked veterans wandered the London streets at night, dimly searching for a repose that had been stolen from them forever.
Maisie lives on these pages not only as a detective, but as a subtle master of psychology whose every word and gesture seem calculated to lead to the revelation of truth. But Maisie herself has tried to bury a portion of her past. As the plot of Winspear's mystery unfolds, so, too, does Maisie's personal history, and we discover that the riddles of the visible world may be surpassed by the enigmas of the mind and of the memory.
ABOUT JACQUELINE WINSPEAR
Jacqueline Winspear was born and raised in Kent, in the south of England. In 1990, after a career in publishing in London, she moved to California. Maisie Dobbs is her first novel, and the first in a series featuring the eponymous heroine.
A CONVERSATION WITH JACQUELINE WINSPEAR
You write in your novel's acknowledgments about sharing your home with Maisie Dobbs. Do you feel as if she has acquired a reality for you that goes beyond the printed page?
I'm not sure about a reality that goes beyond the printed page. However, in writing Maisie Dobbs I immersed myself in a research process that encompassed not only the Great War, but the late 1920s. When I wasn't writing, I was reading, watching documentaries, or wading through my notes. I wanted Maisie to be a woman of her time, to reflect a certain strength of spirit that was so present with women who had lived through the war, yet I also wanted her to have a uniqueness—in that respect, she took up a lot of space in our home. I think for a time I began every conversation with, "Maisie..."
The dedication of your novel gives a brief description of two of your grandparents, whose lives helped to inspire your story. Would you be interested in telling us anything more about them?
The interesting thing about many people of that Great War generation—especially those who were directly involved in the conflict—is how little they talked about it. People like my grandparents simply "got on with it" so to speak, and certainly it's that same strength of spirit that served the British so well in World War II. There are stories about my grandparents that I find fascinating, but the war stories in particular didn't reach me as oft-told tales, more as something spoken of with quiet gravity.
John "Jack" Winspear (my name is in honor of his nickname and my brother is also named John) was a costermonger by trade, a man who sold vegetables from a horse-drawn cart or "barrow." In fact, he was considered quite successful because he had several horses—many costermongers had hand-barrows for their rounds. He had talked about some of his wartime experiences to my father, but only when asked—and probably badgered, if truth be told. I know that at one point he was a stretcher-bearer, with the job of going out into no-man's land to retrieve the dead and dying. Two stories are particularly sad: On one occasion he came across the bodies of a British soldier and a German soldier—each had killed the other with a bayonet and their hands were still on their rifles, their eyes wide open looking at each other in death. The other story is his description of waiting for the sound of the whistle, the signal for the soldiers to go "over the top" and into a hell that they could only hear until the point of scrambling out of the trench, then screaming to keep themselves running. It was after such a battle, when only my grandfather and one other man in his company were left alive, that he was assigned to work as a stretcher-bearer before being sent to join another brigade. My grandfather died at the age of seventy-seven, and to the day he died he was still removing shrapnel from his legs, from wounds received in 1916 at the Battle of the Somme. My maternal grandmother, Clara, worked at the Woolwich Arsenal in London and, apparently, was almost immediately ostracized by many of her neighbors. You see, women who worked in the factories earned good money for that time, and money meant freedom, a freedom of choice and action, which led to assumptions about a young woman's morals. The fact was that the women worked long, exhausting hours in dangerous conditions. Exposure to cordite and other chemicals used in the manufacture of explosives meant that the health of the liver was compromised. Many women suffered from jaundice—the munitions workers were known as "canaries" for the color of their skin—and the chemicals also caused the hair to have coppery streaks with a lot of static that sparked when you brushed your hair. The funny thing is that Ididn't actually know she was blind in one eye until a few years ago. I was talking to my mother about Clara—she died when I was eighteen—and had always assumed that she had the family "lazy eye" that myself and several of my cousins inherited from somewhere. Then my mother said, "Oh, no, she was half-blinded at the arsenal," and the story emerged about the explosion, how the girls working alongside her had been killed. That's what I mean about that generation never talking about themselves and their experiences. Part of my research was in having my mother talk to other family members (and Clara had ten children), to see what snippets of stories she had told, then piece them together to understand something of her experiences.
Maisie's first case takes her on an unexpectedly personal journey, and it seems that, for you, writing the book was also a voyage of self-discovery. Are there insights this experience has given you about your family history and about yourself that you would care to share with us?
Writing Maisie Dobbs came to be a personal quest in a way that I would never have imagined. I had written about one third or so of the book, squeezing my writing in between work commitments, etc., and then at one point put it aside as I was so busy. During the time of writing that first part of the story, I'd moved, got married, changed jobs—all big events in the space of a year! Then another life-changing moment occurred: I was out riding my horse and had a horrible accident. As I was flying through the air I immediately knew why it was happening, in the grand scheme of things—I had left my writing behind. I suffered a very badly broken arm and crushed shoulder, which required major surgery and the sort of internal hardware that would look at home in a carpenter's shop. Then came convalescence and a good six months of rehab—I was told that even after physical therapy I would be lucky to get 75 percent of the former use of my arm. A few weeks after surgery I was visiting my friend, Adair Lara, a San Francisco writer—I can still remember this so clearly—and she said, "Convalescence is the ideal time to finish your book!" I pointed to my right arm, which was in a sort of padded sling "structure," and said, "With this?" Adair's response was, "Well you've got a left arm haven't you?" So—to cut a long story short—over half of Maisie Dobbs was finished with just one hand on the keyboard, and I was so determined to get the other hand operational that I worked hard at rehab and within three months had the book finished and a good 85 percent of my arm back. The interesting thing is that immediately before my surgery, I was reading Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand, and then afterwards read her personal story of overcoming chronic fatigue in order to write. I found that to be so very inspiring. My accident paled into insignificance against such a challenge, so I was determined not to let the accident stop me, and in effect used it to make the dream of writing a novel come true.
Mysteries as a genre offer a rich interaction between fragmentation and completeness; the detective is expected to extract consistency from the scattered clues of a piecemeal reality. Your book seems especially fascinated with fragments, whether they concern the shattered faces of the denizens of the Retreat, the disruption of England's social order, or Maisie's need to come to terms with her own broken past. As you were writing, what were you thinking about all these different kinds of fragments, and how did you see them in relation to one another?
Looking back, Maisie Dobbs came together like a mosaic, blending the stories and images as one would blend fragments of color and texture. I had the separate stories in my mind's eye: Maisie, her life and background; the effects of the Great War on one particular group of veterans; Maisie in 1929 and her quest to discover the truth about the Retreat, and also to establish her reputation now that she was no longer working with Maurice Blanche. Braiding the story with these strands was a very organic process for me.
A writer who tries to re-create a historical period faces some formidable challenges. What research or literary models enabled you to reconstruct the 'teens and 'twenties so convincingly?
In writing about that time between the start of the Great War and the years leading up to WWII, I was drawing upon the fruits of my own curiosity. In addition, I have been very fortunate in the people I've known and where I grew up. We lived in a small hamlet where, until I was about ten, my brother and I were the only children and my parents were among just a few younger couples. Everyone else was from that older generation of people who came of age in the Great War. It was therefore easy for me to capture the way people interacted, the language, the protocols of communication. I always joked that my early childhood had more in common with that of an Edwardian child than with, say, my cousins who lived in London—I think that has served me well with Maisie Dobbs. In addition, I've always loved that time between the wars. I am interested in the history of fashion of that time and used to haunt the Victoria and Albert Museum's costume collection in London. Also, years ago I used to help my friend on her stall in London's Portobello Road market. She dealt mainly in Art Deco jewelry and china, so I used to read a lot about the era—I wanted to sound as if I knew what I was talking about! During the time that I was writing Maisie Dobbs, I read only nonfiction in connection with the Great War, the events of the first thirty years of the century, etc. I made several visits to use the archives at London's Imperial War Museum and also walked every street that Maisie walks in London. So many people were helpful in responding to my requests for details, as can be seen in the acknowledgments. I can't say that I had any literary models in writing Maisie Dobbs, though.
During the flashback portion at the center of the novel, Maisie is often paired with other young women: Enid, Priscilla Evernden, Iris Rigson. However, in the 1929 segments, she has no female confidante near her own age. What do you think accounts for this difference?
Maisie's journey from a girl who has tragically lost her mother, to maid, to young woman with her own business, has given her an aura of "aloneness." Enid was her friend, but they were thrown together and in truth were a bit like chalk and cheese. Yet Maisie came to love Enid for her spirit and humor, and recognized that Priscilla also had similar qualities. Again, Maisie and Iris were friends of circumstance rather than choice, but their terrible experiences in France resulted in a different kind of bond. The fact that Maisie has no such friend in 1929 is partly to do with her position and partly due to her commitment to her work. Maisie's "aloneness" comes to a head in Birds of a Feather, the second Maisie Dobbs novel.
In her studies with Maurice Blanche, Maisie may have become familiar with the principle of quantum mechanics that holds that one cannot observe something without somehow changing it. She seems particularly aware of the fact that her investigations are bound to change the people involved, and she is admirably careful about wanting to change people only for the better. How were you able to create such a humanly sensitive private investigator?
Maisie's challenges—both in breaking through the "class ceiling" and as a nurse in France—have provided her with a unique perspective. Later, in her work as an investigator, her experiences have allowed greater insights into what it means to be human. In addition, her studies and curiosity have resulted in an innate understanding of how experience changes a person, that even good change can be challenging, and that her interactions with a person might change the outcome of events, or their thinking or attitude. She takes on this responsibility and, in a way, accompanies the person to a point in their personal journey where they are safe. She is not one to simply put the clues together, sort things out and move on. As far as what enabled me to create such a character, I think my own life experiences together with my training and work as a personal/life coach have helped. I have worked with many people who have made enormous leaps of faith to bring about change in their lives and have seen how such personal journeys can be challenging and, frankly, scary. So some of that has been brought into Maisie Dobbs.
Despite all the violence that lies beneath the surface of your story—a world war, a series of unexplained deaths, and so on—you tend to deal with the actual moments of violence with careful restraint. The death of one key character is reported in a telegram. Another chapter cuts away just before a horrible explosion. Is there an authorial philosophy behind this well-mannered delicacy?
I think it's a case of "less is more." While I certainly did not want to offer a clean and tidy image of a war that was filled with pain, terror, and bloodshed, I feel that a scene of violence can be just as effectively conveyed with less graphic images—and leave the imagination to do its work. Also, apart from the scene at the casualty clearing station, I was dealing very much with the aftermath of war, with words unspoken, with memories buried, and with scars so terrible one can but weep to think of the pain suffered. I didn't want to create graphic, violent scenes that overshadowed the whole book. For me the challenge was in conveying the lingering suffering of an individual and a country.
Maisie's mentor, Maurice Blanche, is a man of remarkably keen perceptions. Have you had a Maurice Blanche in your own life?
Maurice is really an amalgam of the teachers that have most impacted my life, whether in school or work. However, in his manner, Maurice reflects a teacher and friend who was most dear to me and to whom my second Maisie Dobbs novel is dedicated. Sadly, he died before Maisie Dobbs was published—and it had been my dream since childhood to present him with a copy of my first book.
For someone dedicated to tracing through the labyrinths and "mazes" of human psychology and behavior, "Maisie" is a beautifully chosen name. In addition, the initials "M. D." are delightfully apt for someone who approaches detective work as a means toward healing. Are we right in supposing that a lot of thought went into naming her?
Gosh, I hate to admit this, but the name "Maisie Dobbs" just came to me instantly along with the character. I had never written fiction before, yet had been badgered by one of my mentors to try fiction. I had no idea where to start—my other book-length manuscript was a memoir about my childhood—yet one day as I was stuck in traffic while driving to an appointment, Maisie Dobbs just came to me, just as she does in the first chapter. In my mind's eye I watched her walking through the turnstile at Warren Street tube station. I instantly knew her name and who she was. By the time I had driven another half mile, I knew her story. After work, I rushed home to write the first fifteen or so pages that became Chapter One. I have never wavered regarding her name and never doubted that the novel would bear her name. I am forever grateful that such an inspired moment gave me such a name, as it fits her perfectly.
Do you think the traits of a good private eye also make for a good writer?
I can only speak for myself here, but I do believe that being a good, detailed, and vigilant observer—of events, people, one's environment, sounds, colors, etc.—is the key to being a good writer. Curiosity is important for me, and asking questions. Like Maurice, I'm a great believer in questions. When I think of my favorite writers, their work reflects a quest, a journey of discovery to the heart of a matter—whether that journey takes the form of an essay, a poem, a short story, or a novel.
As you point out, many of the disabled soldiers at the Retreat develop a deep loyalty to Adam Jenkins because he provides "answers to unfathomable questions" and "leadership in their uncertainty." Do you feel that Jenkins's story is in some ways a parallel to the rise of Hitler?
I do believe that people such as Jenkins, Hitler—or any such leader—gain power amid fear and uncertainty. At the heart of every cult is a compelling personality, one who exudes a certain charisma. In Jenkins I wanted to explore the wounds that resulted in his terrible acts at the Retreat. The trouble is that such individuals come to power on a tide of support from people desperate for leadership—people who are suffering emotionally,economically—and then such leaders create a mood of fear to maintain control when the people begin to doubt. Thus the people—whether a group or a nation—are powerless. And that fear can be of the leader himself and the consequence of crossing him, or of an external threat to one's safety.
The almost blank period that you have intentionally left between 1917 and 1929 is deeply tantalizing. Do you plan to fill this gap in subsequent Maisie Dobbs novels and, if so, would you like to drop any hints at the moment?
Yes, that period is extremely tantalizing. There are a couple of possibilities: A case from her days with Maurice that is reopened; and a series of stories from the early days of Maisie's apprenticeship with Maurice.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
