Customer Reviews

An Incomplete Revenge: A Maisie Dobbs Novel (Maisie Dobbs Mysteries)

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Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series is written from a lovely point of view. During this period between the world wars the women of England found themselves in a surplus situation of millions compared to the men who had been obliterated upon the killing fields of France. This problem was also an opportunity.

In this fifth book of the series we find Maisie trying to solve the mystery of some mysterious arson cases in a tiny village during the hop harvest. The village is a strange place, filled with an ominous sense of dread.

Maisie has been liberated in a sense occupationally by the war. Many women found new careers because there were so few men left. She also finds another form of liberation in this book, the freedom to love again.

Winspear evokes a much gentler place where discourse was less profane, crimes were less explicit, and the carnage was a tragic memory of war. Violence is implied. Language is muted. Emotions drizzle across the page like an English rain. Exquisite!

Psychologist and Investigator Maisie Dobbs is hired to look into an odd series of petty thefts and fires in a small English village a decade or so after WW I. A series of annual fires, all near the anniversary of a Zeppelin attack on the town during WW I, are never reported to the authorities. The fire brigades are never called. The villagers extinguish the fires, acting as a single community, yet they seem to ignore the obvious reality that the fires are not accidents or coincidences. When asked, the indicdents are explained as accidents. No one will talk about them or the night of the Zeppelin attack, obviously deeply traumatized by something. Maisie gets to the bottom of it all, yet the truth is too unsettling to be comforting.

The book provides interesting insights into the British class system of the early 20th century, gypsie culture and the aftermath of war, but the book's true greatness is not manifest until near the end, as the pieces fall into place.

Though it starts a bit slow and may not immediately strike the reader as a great or even exceptionally good book, it exposes human nature as only great literature can. It is the only contemporary book I have read in years that I consider to be a great work of literature. Winspear peals back the layers of human nature, revealing raw grief, anger, fear, revenge and guilt.

This is one of the few books of our time that should be read and regarded as a classic by future generations. Once read, it will not be forgotten. It is not just another good detective novel.

In 1931 business tycoon James Compton considers buying property in Heronsdene, Kent but a rash of questionable fires has left him re-evaluating his selection. He asks his friend London based investigative psychologist Maisie Dobbs to look into what seems to him as obvious the work of an arsonist. She would do anything for her mentor and besides needs the money he offers as the Great Depression has hammered at consultants like her so she agrees to visit the tiny rustic village.

Maisie quickie uncovers the suspicious dealings of a landowner while wondering why the locals refuse to speak about visiting Gypsies or a WW I zeppelin raid that killed an entire family; as the behavior is way beyond the normal suspicion of strangers. A struggling Maisie begins to tie together the townsfolk, the gypsies, the Great War and what happened afterward in remote Heronsdene, but someone is on war alert watching her every step.

The latest Dobbs between the World Wars' mystery is a terrific entry in one of the best twentieth century private investigation series. Maisie is at her best as she sleuths in a location in which no one wants her around let alone snooping. However, it is the sense of time and place that makes AN INCOMPLETE REVENGE and its four predecessors (see MESSENGER OF TRUTH, PARDONABLE LIES, MAISIE DOBBS and BIRDS OF A FEATHER) worth reading as few authors if any bring to life England in the late 1920s and early 1930s as picturesquely as Jacqueline Winspear consistently has done with the marvelous Maisie mysteries.

Harriet Klausner

Over the course of four previous novels, Jacqueline Winspear's heroine, Maisie Dobbs, has developed into one of the most complex and compelling female sleuths in current mystery fiction. A former World War I nurse simultaneously struggling to cope with the ongoing legacy of what she saw and experienced in that horrible war while trying to get her fledgling investigation business off the ground in London, Maisie has emerged as a fully developed, intriguing character. Appealingly contemporary in her personality, credibly part of her time and place (thanks in no small part to Winspear's impeccable historical research), Maisie Dobbs's fans read these books as much for insights into this absorbing heroine as for the engaging mystery plots the author constructs.

AN INCOMPLETE REVENGE, Winspear's fifth outing, will not disappoint readers, with its skillful intersection of character development, historical detail and intricate plotting. The novel opens with Maisie seemingly making a fresh start after the tumultuous events of her previous investigation (recounted in MESSENGER OF TRUTH), a deeply personal case that forced her to confront events of the war but left her estranged from her longtime friend and mentor.

Maisie's newfound happiness, though, is tempered by economic pressures, as the worldwide depression of the early 1930s affects her business prospects in London. When an old family friend asks for her help in investigating some potential business acquisitions in Kent, Maisie leaps at the opportunity to enhance her personal financial situation while visiting with her beloved father. By coincidence, Maisie's long-time assistant Billy is also in the area, participating in the annual hop-picking with his family. It turns out, however, that Maisie will need every bit of Billy's help, her own ingenuity and even the assistance of some most unlikely allies --- the gypsies who also make annual pilgrimages to the region for the hop-picking --- to solve the multi-layered mysteries that haunt this small Kentish village.

During her investigation of a series of petty crimes, including arson, that plague the village and the brickworks her friend is interested in acquiring, Maisie soon suspects that the events are hardly the work of small-time thieves or petty vandals. Instead, as she delves into the inhabitants' history of heartbreak, loss and suspicion, she begins to suspect a much more widespread, and sinister, force is at work --- one that, like her own heartbreak, dates back to the catastrophic events of the Great War.

Set during the turbulent, evocative years between the wars, the Maisie Dobbs series delves into the gaping holes left by one war while exploring the roots of another on the horizon. AN INCOMPLETE REVENGE does a particularly masterful job of this, as Winspear explores how the prejudice inspired by one conflict leads to the insularity, fear and prejudice that can spark another. As for Maisie, the character who readers will eagerly return to again and again, this latest installment will not disappoint. Rather, as she closes the book on one particularly painful chapter of her past, Maisie seems poised, in future installments, to finally pursue the contentment she so richly deserves. Will she uncover this potential happiness with the same aplomb with which she tackles her toughest cases? Readers will wait with bated breath to find out.

--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl

An Incomplete Revenge is the fifth installment in Jacqueline Winspear's series featuring investigator/psychologist Maisie Dobbs. In this outing Maisie is asked to look into a rash of petty crimes and suspicious fires in the village of Heronsdene, where her client, James Compton, is hoping to purchase a large property. Maisie's employment coincides with hop picking season, and the village and its neighboring farms are consequently flooded with outsiders, migrant workers of a sort--Londoners, including Maisie's assistant Billy Beale and his family, who work the fields every fall to earn some extra cash. The gardens are also being worked by a family of gypsies who turn out to be integral to the story.

Winspear's plot is slow-moving but ultimately rewarding, as Masie comes to unravel the mystery of Heronsdene, the great secret that has wrapped the villagers in a sort of collective depression since the Great War ended. But one doesn't really read a Maisie Dobbs novel for the plot, at least not primarily. Nor are Winspear's characters the dominant feature of her books. Maisie may be a well-developed character--saddled as she is with the Great Unhappy Fact of her life, her beau's tragic injury in the War. But her concerns and sorrows fail to move me, I'm afraid. Winspear's series is more about the atmosphere of the books, the feel of England after the War, when people were still smarting from their losses, a time that was slower than ours but which had seen its horrors. The author pays a great deal of attention to period details--for example, her descriptions of clothing and room furnishings. But these can be overdone:

"She had only to knock once, and the door was opened by a woman in her early sixties, wearing a gray skirt with a blue cardigan and a floral sleeveless wraparound housecoat fastened with a length of cord around the waist. She wore knitted stockings that had gathered at the ankle and black lace-up shoes. Her hair was tied back in a bun so tight it seemed to pull at the corner of her eyes."

All this--and the woman's parlor is described at some length as well--about an unimportant character.

The book is a slow read, with small moments sometimes stretched too far by way, I suppose, of setting the mood:

"Maisie reached for her tea, which she had set down when the interview began. She sipped; then, continuing to rest the saucer in her hand, she held the cup to her lips but did not drink. When she sipped again, she looked directly at Sandermere."

That pace (just drink the damned tea, Maisie!), combined with the somber tone of the books--Maisie is herself wrapped in a bit of depression, tied with a length of cord around the waist--make for a moody read. That's not necessarily a bad thing: you'll just not be skipping merrily through Winspear's pages.

-- Debra Hamel

I am incredibly moved by this book. Some have commented on the "slowness" of Winspear's books, and I can only say, "Get over it, it was a different era, and the pace is different, as it was then." This is the next to the last in Winspear's series of Maisie Dobbs mysteries, set in the early years of the 20th century. This one takes place in 1931, as economic distress deepens in England and on the continent. We are taken not only into the London world of Maisie and her assistant Billy, but into the small Kentish village of Heronsdene which has an inexplicable darkness about it. The son of Maisie's former benefactor wants to buy the brickworks in Heronsdene, but wants to make sure that there will be no hidden problems with the takeover.

In her investigation Maisie is drawn into the world of the hop-pickers who come from London to work as temporary crop harvesters, as well as into the world of the gypsies who visit the Kentish Weald in September. Maisie has gypsy blood, coming from her maternal grandmother, and the contact with Beulah, the gypsy matriarch, reconnects her to her mother who died when she was quite young. The plot interweaves the fate of the Heronsdene boys in World War I with the fate of a Dutch family which has emigrated to Heronsdene and with the local "squire" whose criminal behavior has controlled the village for most of his life. Maisie's unraveling of the past enables the outsiders and the natives of this small village to work through a shameful past action and arrive at reconciliation. At the same time, Maisie is enabled to let go of her own past, her mourning for her great love Simon Lynch, and move into the future.

She has danced with the gypsies and has witnessed Beulah's burial and the burning of her wagon; then her friend Priscilla gives her a gramophone and a recording of gypsy music. "Maisie felt the rhythm in her feet, her body, and her arms, and she remembered the gypsies moving to the music, pounding the ground in a celebration of the spirit. So, alone in her flat, Maisie Dobbs danced."

Winspear keeps getting better - the last in this series (so far) is just as good as this one. People who like Alexander McCall Smith will also love these for their depth and their psychological insight.

It's only been a few weeks since I belatedly discovered Jacqueline Winspear's "Maisie Dobbs" series and it's been great fun playing catch-up. I don't want to waste space here repeating what so many other 5-star reviewers have already said so well. But I did want to jump in and say why I can't agree with the Newsday blurb at the top of the paperback jacket which advises newbies to start with this fifth novel in the series and work their way back...because this one "shows Maisie at the top of her detecting form."

No question about it, Maisie is definitely "at the top of her detecting form" in "An Incomplete Revenge." But I'd recommend starting with book one, "Maisie Dobbs." Why? Because this series concerns itself at least as much with the connectedness and personal trajectories of its continuing characters--Maisie, Frankie, the Beals, the Comptons, Simon, Priscilla, Maurice, Stratton et al--and its setting (England itself in the years between the wars) as it does with the case at hand and the detective work involved. If, after sampling book one, you find that you're more interested in the cases than the characters, then fine, bypass books 2-4, "Birds of a Feather," "Pardonable Lies" and "Messenger of Truth" and jump straight into this one; it's a great read indeed. But if it's Winspear's marvelous mix of characters, casework and wonderfully well crafted sense of time and place that grabs you, then chronological order is definitely the way to go, in this reader's opinion.

As in all of Jacqueline Winspears' Maisie Dobbs' titles, there's a hint of darkness in the characters of `An Incomplete Revenge'. Not in an evil sense, but in a very human sense--the sometimes weary parts of us that search for truths and find only more questions. There is also, especially in Maisie, the sense that it would take more than a complete financial depression in between two world wars to keep her down. You can't help but admire that kind of strength. At least I can't.

The cast is large, but many of them fall into certain `tribes' which makes it less difficult to keep track. Those that are repeat members, such as Maisie's friends and family, receive a brief reintroduction before they blend, for the most part, seamlessly into the story. The story itself is not complex, but you do have to pay attention because the events of fifteen years unfold to tell it with some surprising twists and turns.

The scenes of the hop fields and pickers were vivid, the description of the gypsy's and their camp, rich. I particularly enjoy the slightly metaphysical side of Maisie. After having spent twenty years in New Mexico, I wasn't surprised that she would surround herself with white light for protection, or check that her feet were flat on the floor to keep rooted to the earth for strength.

`An Incomplete Revenge' is completely enjoyable. As always, I look forward to the next Jacqueline Winspear book.

More than a mystery, more than a history - Winspear has created the essence of an era and of human interpersonal relationships in a changing world. All this comes in the every day experiences of a charming, intelligent young woman called Maisie Dobbs.

EWG

The Maisie Dobbs series is exquisitely researched and sensitively written, with the nuances of the British class system - in radical flux between the Great War and the Hitler War - embodied by the characters and their interactions. Winspear is careful to set her plots in a way that allows her to address social issues and politics while solving mysteries, and the reader always learns a great deal while having a grand read.

If there's a flaw in this jewel of a series, it's Winspear's dependence coincidence. More accurately, it's her addiction to it and her almost morbid sensitivity about the same. Not only do the plots bristle with coincidences big and small, but the narrator feels the need to explain/accommodate/apologize for these devices, even as Winspear strews them round her characters' feet. Indeed, the title of the fourth book in the series, Messenger of Truth, is part of a quote attributed to Maisie Dobbs' mentor: "Coincidence is the messenger of truth." In An Incomplete Revenge, Maisie's assistant quotes it back at her.

If coincidence were really the messenger of truth, Maisie would be the Delphic Oracle, not merely a hardworking and insightful detective. Winspear's multiple coincidences diminish the talents of the wonderful character she has created.

All readers of mysteries are prepared to accept some coincidences. They are part of the genre, and only the greatest luminaries in the field can fashion a plot without them. Winspear would do well to acknowledge this, to acknowledge it tacitly, and let us get on with our reading. Between the coincidental events and her need to make them acceptable, it sets a reader's teeth on edge.

One of the things we learn about in An Incomplete Revenge is the life and culture of the gypsies, or Roma people. Winspear has taken the trouble to acquire quite a few words of their language, and she sprinkles them liberally through the text. Sadly, the results are not felicitous. Rather than letting readers acquire meaning from context or from a quick appositive, Winspear uses repetition, writing phrases and clauses twice: "A Roma would trust anyone before a diddakio - before the half-bred people who were born of gypsy and gorja. . . . Beulah brought four tin bowls from underneath the caravan - underneath the vardo in the gypsy tongue." (2)

This becomes MASSIVELY irritating very very quickly, and it goes on and on. Furthermore, the since the repetition functions as translation, it raises the question of why Winspear uses only nouns. If we have to read through translations, it would at least be fair to give us some syntax and grammar in Anglo-Romani.

But keep reading. While the Roma discourse makes the first part of the book irritating, once the plot gets firing on all cylinders, Winspear sticks with the vocab she's already introduced, and the gypsies become an intriguing part of the multifaceted mystery.

This is a story about calling things by their right names. Things and people. The people in Winspear's books are fabulously drawn, unusual without being quaint, all of them the sort of characters who must surely have lives they keep on living once we've turned the final page. We see Pris and her pack of wild sons again in this novel, even as we lose the lost-boy, lost-love Simon. Billy and his family engage in the Londoner's working vacation, hop-picking in Kent just as Maisie has a meaty mystery to investigate there. Lots of solid background details make the countryside's beauty pull the reader into the pages, while the ever-solid Frankie Dobbs is nearby to offer Maisie (and the reader) comfort and support when things get dark.

One of the best things about the series is that things change. Maisie moves from one place to another, from one case to another, out of some relationships and on with some more. It's a sadness to end such a book, but there's comfort in knowing that we will see Billy and Pris again, while the gypsy connection looks ripe for many future tales.