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47 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"For he was indubitably a man who has been to war as he vanishes into the noxious blend of smoke and fog.", February 19, 2009
A much darker and leaner tale than her previous Maisie Dobbs outings, in Among the Mad, Jacqueline Winspear focuses on the collateral damage of the Great War, the terror and chaos of the battlefield and how it ultimately devastated a generation of young men. Maisie unexpectedly journeys into hostile territory and a dark landscape that involves a loss of Britain's innocence. Much of the drama plays out on the crowded streets of London as Maisie and her assistant Billy Beal find themselves caught up in a 1930's style suicide bombing when a man begging on the street corner suddenly activates a hand grenade inside his tattered and stained khaki coat. Barely escaping with her life, Maisie had innocently walked up to him, his leg stretched out, as if he were lame. And as she had reached into her bag to offer money to someone who had so little, the grenade had suddenly exploded. There was a point at which Maisie new that the man would take his life. The man had been a soldier, the right leg amputated. As Detective Inspector Richard Stratton, who saw it all happen offers Maisie as measure of comfort, she remains haunted by the sense that someone had seen her reach out to the doomed man, had seen their eyes meet just before he pulled the pin that would ignite the grenade. It is this attack that coincides with a much larger threat. In a wet London with an "unyielding quality of gray light that makes the word Merry Christmas seem hardly worth saying," a note, soiled by saliva, is received by the Home Security, telling of a terrible disaster involving a lethal nerve agent. The note also mentions Maisie's name and demands that the government act immediately to alleviate the suffering of all unemployed, starting with measures to assist those who have served their country in wartime. Certainly Maisie's talents render her a valuable member of the group centered in Scotland Yard. Together with Special Branch's Colm Darby and DCI Robert MacPharlane, Maisie prepares her template, piecing together a portrait of a man who is haunted by the ghosts of the Great War and has somehow been abandoned and has abandoned life. From the outset it is obvious that two cases, linked by the person writing the letter, has used Maisie's name as currency to ad weight to his endeavor. Then a sickening report comes in of a gas attack on a number of dogs in Battersea. Coupled with the surprise revelation that MacFarlane has a group in custody and believes them to be behind the threats, union activists. Still the question remains: How could a man bring himself to kill innocent life, both animal and human? Winspear unfolds Maisie's latest case with a chilling urgency, from the paranoia of a killer who is determined to gas half of London to the furtive events at Mulberry Point and the strange experiments of the staff and their overexposure to nerve agents, the fate of many of the young soldiers unknown, and a cover up by the men of the Military Intelligence, Section five. Soon Maisie's investigations reveal the ugly details of the enigmatic Dr Anthony Lawrence, an expert in treatment of psychological trauma whose actions are surely dictated by his ambition and a professional curiosity. Maisie is hardly a naïve protagonist but in this installment she is forced to confront her own reticence and her lack of emotional mastery when faced with the possibility of a more intimate connection. Meanwhile, Maisie tries to help Billy's wife Doreen and her growing melancholia, and also that of her best friend best friend Priscilla who is battles drink while trying desperately to remake her life. Even after thirteen years the war still ravages these characters. Shocking and painful, Winspear tries to inject hope into the narrative even as war neurosis and neurasthenia battle fatigue seem to have consumed a young soldier's heart, ultimately enveloping him in hysteria along with thousands of other lost boys. While the novel has the traditional attributes of a fast-paced and entertaining historical mystery - with the delightful character of Maisie always at its core - there's a deeper understanding at work here as the author digs deep into the mind of a man who has seen battle at close quarters and is so afflicted mentally and emotionally, embroiled in a deep melancholia and darkness. Mike Leonard February 09.
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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
From the violence of war to.... "peace"?, February 20, 2009
In the world that Maisie Dobbs ("Psychologist and Investigator") inhabits, peace is an elusive phenomenon, even 13 years after the Armistice put an end to the trench warfare that she witnessed as a nurse. In the aftermath of the Great War, Maisie now finds herself battling with the legacy of that conflict. In Winspear's five previous novels, she has dealt with the aftermath of mysterious wartime Zeppelin attacks, evil doings at a hospital for disfigured soldiers and myriad other crimes tied to the aftermath of the war. In this, Winspear's sixth novel in the series, Maisie is unwittingly dragged into a case that involves terrorist threats. After witnessing a man she believes to be a troubled veteran blow himself up with a hand grenade, her name is mentioned in a threatening letter that another soldier sends to Scotland Yard and top government ministers. Along with her former admirer, Inspector Stratton, Maisie must work with Special Branch police to fend off a chemical weapons threat from a disturbed individual demanding that the government treat veterans -- disabled or otherwise -- fairly and honorably. It's a difficult case for Maisie, not only because she must grapple with her own mixed emotions -- she has seen, all too clearly, the struggle that the men she once nursed in France have when they try to return civilian life -- but because she is also grappling with the personal problems of her assistant, Billy Beale, and her closest friend. Not surprisingly, perhaps, given this somber backdrop, the novel often feels very intense and even downright melancholy. That's appropriate, given the subject matter. Still, this would have been a stronger book had Winspear had a lighter touch with both plot and characters. (I have read serial killer novels that felt less dark and depressing.) Still, Winspear's writing is exceptionally strong and powerful, doing justice to the themes she chooses to explore. She also avoids the easy plot twists; Maisie, a complex character who has risen to her current status from life as a servant, has yet to find romance in her postwar life. I am beginning to wonder, however, how long a series with such a narrow focus can endure. Shell shock and the trauma of rebuilding a life after a war is not a theme that offers enough that is new and fresh to remain the core of Maisie's investigations and Winspear's writing for many more books. Yes, it's unquestionably important, but at some point the reader is going to start to shrug his or her shoulders, saying that they've heard it all before. Moreover, as 1932 dawns in Maisie's fictional world, other factors are now emerging as important. There is a global depression taking hold, the Blackshirts are marching in London (a fact that gets one short, cryptic reference in this book) and within a year, Hitler will take power in Germany. I, for one, hope that Winspear finds a way to blend her fascination with the Great War with a more diverse array of mysteries for Maisie to investigate and plots that depend as much upon what is happening contemporaneously as what happened more than a decade previously. Continuing to revisit the same territory without some new element will, I fear, cause some of her readers, myself among them, will begin to fall by the wayside. For those who have not yet stumbled across Rennie Airth, I'd recommend two other mysteries set in the same time period: The Blood-Dimmed Tide (Penguin Mysteries)and River of Darkness. I was elated to discover this superb author has a third book coming out this summer. While I'll give Winspear's latest four stars, either of Airth's books -- which deal with similar issues -- easily capture a fifth star. Charles Todd's longer series features a Scotland Yard detective grappling with shell shock, but who investigates a wide array of crimes, some of which have no connection to the war itself. Increasingly, I am coming to prefer that series to Winspear's books, simply because of the variety of themes the books explore.
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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Too much of a good thing, March 24, 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
This is the sixth book in the series about Maisie Dobbs, a former domestic servant who "made good" as a result of sponsorship by her former employer and is now operating as a psychologically-oriented private investigator in depression-era London. I enjoyed several of the earlier books, especially for their compelling picture of a British society still reeling from the effects of WWI and now experiencing the economic tribulations of the Depression. Unfortunately, in this book the atmosphere took over to the detriment of the plot and the characters. Although the Depression is an important element of the society that Ms. Winspear effectively constructs, the psychological injury caused by the Great War seems to be the dominant theme and the major depressant on the characters. The book opens with a former soldier committing suicide on the sidewalk as Maisie witnesses in horror; it continues as the police and Maisie try to track down an insane former soldier who is threatening to commit terrorist attacks in London to bring attention to the needs of veterans; the wife of Maisie's employee Billy becomes deranged by the death of her young daughter and has to be hospitalized; and Maisie has to deal with what seems to be the impending nervous breakdown of her best friend Priscilla. Practically EVERYONE in this book has serious mental problems; it exceeds credibility. The atmosphere of this psychologically dysfunctional society overwhelms the book to the detriment of the plot. During most of the book, Maisie and the police are racing against time to locate a potential mass murderer, but there is little sense of suspense because all the details about the society and the historical background that created it and molded the characters slow the plot to a plod. The overwhelming attention to the atmosphere also seemed to result in short shrift being given to the development of the characters. Two police officers, McFarland and Stratton, might be interested in Maisie romantically, but they were not QUITE well-developed enough for me to be sure...or to care. There is a significant subplot about a scientist whose devotion to his science or maybe to ego gratification leads him to commit immoral acts, but the character of this scientist should have been developed more, so that we could have understood him better. The point of view never let us get inside these people. Maisie herself seems flat; it is hard to tell what motivates her. I listened to this book, and the medium may have affected my impressions, since I enjoyed the 3 Maisie Dobbs books I read the traditional way much more. The reader has a wonderful British accent, but her delivery seemed a bit melodramatic and unnatural. I found especially annoying her habit of accenting certain words in a sentence that struck me as NOT the words a person would normally stress. I kept wondering, "Is she implying some emotion or attitude I don't get, or is this just bad reading?" Whichever it was, I would suggest that you read other Maisie Dobbs books before you tackle this one, and if you get as far as book 6, read the book rather than listening to the audio.
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From the time I realized that in Maisie Dobbs I had a series character, I've wanted to explore further the phenomenon of the range of war neuroses known to the layperson as "shell shock," and how we see those whose behavior isn't always within the bounds of what we consider "normal." I also wanted to look again, through the lens of story and history, at the manner in which society treats wounded veterans, especially those whose wounds cannot be seen, but are of the mind and spirit. To do this, I drew as much upon personal experience as my research. 
