Synopsis
"A female investigator every bit as brainy and battle-hardened as Lisbeth Salander." — Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air, on Maisie Dobbs
Sunday September 3rd 1939. At the moment Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain broadcasts to the nation Britain’s declaration of war with Germany, a senior Secret Service agent breaks into Maisie Dobbs' flat to await her return. Dr. Francesca Thomas has an urgent assignment for Maisie: to find the killer of a man who escaped occupied Belgium as a boy, some twenty-three years earlier during the Great War.
In a London shadowed by barrage balloons, bomb shelters and the threat of invasion, within days another former Belgian refugee is found murdered. And as Maisie delves deeper into the killings of the dispossessed from the “last war," a new kind of refugee — an evacuee from London — appears in Maisie's life. The little girl billeted at Maisie’s home in Kent does not, or cannot, speak, and the authorities do not know who the child belongs to or who might have put her on the “Operation Pied Piper” evacuee train. They know only that her name is Anna.
As Maisie’s search for the killer escalates, the country braces for what is to come. Britain is approaching its gravest hour — and Maisie could be nearing a crossroads of her own.
About Jacqueline Winspear
See more books from this AuthorWinspear teeters on the brink of stating the emotionally obvious at times but largely pulls back and weaves a convincing historical drama together with a rocky journey for her heroine.
Read Full Review of In This Grave Hour: A Maisie ... | See more reviews from KirkusThe mystery fails to grip, and the quality of the prose falls short of Winspear’s usual high standard.
Read Full Review of In This Grave Hour: A Maisie ... | See more reviews from Publishers WeeklyThe best thing for all is how the whole series delivers solid story and sympathetic characters. In This Grave Hour is lucky number 13, and there’s no sign the series will stop showing how individual acts of heart can do much to counter collective tragedy.
Read Full Review of In This Grave Hour: A Maisie ... | See more reviews from NY Journal of BooksJacqueline Winspear has created a vivid niche of her own in looking back at recent conflicts, casting Maisie in the relatively limited roles that were occupied by women in those days. She has moved her from a housemaid to the aristocracy...
Read Full Review of In This Grave Hour: A Maisie ... | See more reviews from Washington TimesAlthough IN THIS GRAVE HOUR is a well-realized historical novel, full of period details that help enliven this pivotal era in 20th-century history, many of the issues it raises continue to hold currency today. Conversations and debates about whether and how to integrate refugees into society remain relevant...
Read Full Review of In This Grave Hour: A Maisie ...Winspear is a practiced hand at navigating these difficulties, and In This Grave Hour bustles forward with a smooth readability that’s only enhanced by the author’s wily allusions to a very different and far more contemporary European refugee crisis.
Read Full Review of In This Grave Hour: A Maisie ...If you threw a dinner party - even a very small one - for literature's most compelling female detectives, there would be a place card for Maisie Dobbs.
Read Full Review of In This Grave Hour: A Maisie ...I liked Journey to Munich, but In This Grave Hour easily surpasses it. This is some fucking good storytelling on the part of author, Jacqueline Winspear. I can't wait for the next Maisie Dobbs novel.
Read Full Review of In This Grave Hour: A Maisie ...Although some exposition is necessary to understand who Maisie Dobbs is and what people and events mean to her, the author does not overpower us with retellings of the past. This book can be read alone, but will most certainly inspire readers to go back and discover the details of Maisie's life and the background of the characters who surround her.
Read Full Review of In This Grave Hour: A Maisie ...As in Maisie’s previous assignments, the motives for murder are neither simplistic nor predictable, and they always contain psychological elements. When you’ve finished reading a Maisie Dobbs mystery, you’re always left with something to think about, and that is what makes it such a fabulous and addictive series.
Read Full Review of In This Grave Hour: A Maisie ...An aggregated and normalized score based on 97 user ratings from iDreamBooks & iTunes