Review by New York Times Review
Whatever Robbie was expecting at the end of this tense trip, it wasn't a big tip and a compliment on his driving. But that's the way it is with Grimes: Great characters who say and do the most unexpected things are her stock in trade. The charmer here is 10-year-old Patty Haigh ("looks like a little girl, but acts like MI6"), one of a group of loosely parented children who hang around the stations at Waterloo and Heathrow, practicing the skills needed to be cops. Patty even talks her way into a firstclass seat on a plane to Nairobi by attaching herself to the murderer she's pursuing. "For someone who shoots people," she acknowledges, "he was pretty nice." Meanwhile, Grimes's irresistibly attractive Scotland Yard man is busy solving the murder of his newly acquired friends David Moffit, an American astronomer, and his wife, Rebecca. With enthusiastic assistance from his wealthy friend Melrose Plant and Plant's fellow drinkers at the Jack and Hammer pub, Jury manages to have multiple sets of eyes on his suspect. But our eyes are glued to Patty, off in Africa and having the time of her life. what's that smell? The acrid odor of fire is always cause for alarm in the mysteries C. J. Box sets in heavily forested Wyoming. But there's something strange about the odor that's coming from the burner at a lumber mill in the DISAPPEARED (Putnam, $27), "something that smelled a little like roast chicken." Wylie Frye, the night manager, recognizes the peculiar stench, but for $2,500 he can take shallow breaths and ignore it. The task of identifying that strange smell falls to Joe Pickett, the conscientious game warden in these rugged novels who is mostly charged with monitoring the wildlife of the region, where so much land is managed by the federal government. That explains his interest in a dicey wind energy project and his involvement with a group of falconers clamoring to hunt with eagles. But when a British tourist disappears from the dude ranch where Joe's daughter works, he shows the tough-and-tender qualities that make him such a great guy to have on your side. HISTORY comes alive when a character you think of as a friend is in the thick of the action. That's how Jacqueline Winspear keeps her Maisie Dobbs mysteries so fresh. TO DIE BUT ONCE (Harper, $27.99) opens in the spring of 1940, when the German Army is advancing on France and the British are preparing to evacuate. Maisie is already concerned about her office assistant, Billy Beale, who has a son at the front, when she receives an assignment from another worried father. Phil Coombes, landlord of the Prince of Wales pub, hasn't heard from 15-year-old Joe, an apprentice painter with Mike Yates and Sons, a firm that's been contracted to apply a fire-retardant emulsion to buildings at government airfields. Joe had been complaining of bad headaches, a detail that becomes much more significant when his body is discovered and, after the autopsy, Maisie learns he had suffered two brain injuries, one from a fall (or a push?) off a railroad bridge and one from exposure to toxins. Maisie's investigation takes on heft from its underlying theme of war profiteering, with greedy entrepreneurs like Mike Yates exposing their employees to life-threatening working conditions just to make a buck. Talking dirty can be great fun, especially when the trash talkers are Hap Collins and Leonard Pine, the cutup private eyes in Joe R. Lansdale's Texas crime capers. In jackrabbit smile (Mulholland / Little, Brown, $26), the partners are tasked with finding Jackie (Jackrabbit) Mulhaney, the daughter of white supremacists who don't care that Hap is irreverent and Leonard is black and gay. "We want her back," her mother says, "be it flesh, or be it bones." Jackie's father, Sebastian, a fire-breathing preacher, lived hard and died a sad and lonely death. But her brother, Thomas, is carrying the burning torch. For such a freewheeling stylist, Lansdale can write a sensitive obituary for a "confused and tortured soul" like Sebastian, as well as boisterous action scenes for his irrepressible leads. And he has compassion for places like Hell's Half Mile, "a line of honkytonks full of drunken patrons trying to wash down poverty, bad marriages and gone-to-hell children." ?
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [April 8, 2018]
Review by Booklist Review
In the latest Maisie Dobbs mystery (the fourteenth in the series), a young man working on a secret government contract vanishes. Maisie, the English psychologist and private investigator, soon discovers that his death might have a connection to London's organized-crime world. Winspear has done a remarkable job with this series, which has now covered more than a decade (the first installment was set in the late 1920s; this one takes place in 1940); Maisie, a woman working in what was at the time considered almost exclusively a man's field, is a wonderful creation, representative of her era while being at the same time a thoroughly modern woman. The mystery in this book is cleverly designed, too, allowing the author to explore the environment in England in the early, quiet days of WWII the so-called phony war, before the Blitz and to explore England's 1940s-era criminal underground. A first-rate historical mystery.--Pitt, David Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The possible disappearance of a teenage boy drives bestseller Winspear's so-so novel set in 1940 Britain, her 14th featuring London investigator and psychologist Maisie Dobbs (after 2017's In This Grave Hour). Before the war, 15-year-old Joe Coombes worked as an apprentice for a painting and decorating company that the British government retained to paint RAF facilities with a new kind of fire-retardant. When Joe's family doesn't hear from him for several days, his father, publican Phil Coombes, asks Maisie to trace the boy. His son seemed different during their last visits, Phil tells her. Maisie soon learns that Joe took a fatal fall onto a railway track, but the reader already knows, via the prologue, that he was bludgeoned to death. The whodunit story line is often secondary to the larger historical picture-in particular, the British response to the retreat from Dunkirk and the threat of German invasion-and to developments in Maisie's private life. A gratuitous closing contrivance doesn't help. Still, Winspear fans will find much to like. Agent: Amy Rennert, Amy Rennert Agency. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
A somber mood sets the tone for the 14th Maisie Dobbs mystery (after In This Grave Hour) as World War II has begun. Local pub owner Phil Coombes wants Maisie to find his son Joe, who had been working as a painter for a military contractor. Coombes is concerned because Joe had complained of persistent headaches while working with fire-retardant paint. When Joe's body is discovered, Maisie must investigate whether it was a case of murder or just an accident. She finds more than she ever bargained for in the way of Coombes family secrets and military operations. Everyone has something to hide. Meanwhile, the drama of the British troops trapped at Dunkirk is made personal when Maisie's godson jumps on a yacht to help rescue the men. She is also balancing her own personal life with her investigative business as she explores the possibility of adopting Anna, her family's orphaned evacuee. Verdict Winspear has created another rich reading experience for Maisie's many fans, but this title could be seen as entry point for new fans as well. Highly recommended for readers who enjoy a thoughtful mystery. [See Prepub Alert, 9/11/17.]-Kristen Stewart, Pearland Lib., Brazoria Cty. Lib. Syst., TX © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Britain teeters on the brink as World War II ramps up.In May 1940, Maisie Dobbsnurse, spy, psychologist, and enquiry agentis caught up in the strange death of a local lad. Maisie's life has been fraught with difficulty since the death of her husband in a plane crash and her subsequent miscarriage. She's compensated for her anguish by plenty of daring deeds, including working as a nurse in the Spanish Civil War and as a spy in Hitler's Germany. Just as she's seeking to adopt Anna (In This Grave Hour, 2017, etc.), a refugee child living in her home in Kent, Maisie's approached by local publican Phil Coombes, who's desperately worried about his son Joe. Although only 15, he's apprenticed to Yates and Sons, painters and decorators, and has been traveling the country applying a fire-retardant paint to air-base buildings. The paint has apparently given him massive headaches, and now he's vanished. Maisie, who still has enough gas coupons to run her car, agrees to try tracking him down while her assistant, Billy Beale, checks out Yates. When Joe is found dead on the railroad tracks, the police think he probably jumped, but Maisie is suspicious even before the coroner finds a strange lesion in his brain. In truth, there's something a bit off about the whole Coombes family. Their standard of living is a cut above what Maisie would expect their pub to provide. And when she discovers that Mrs. Coombes is the sister of a well-known and dangerous criminal, she becomes convinced that the government paint contract involves a nasty scam and uses all her contacts to search for the truth. Her life is made even more stressful when her godson and a friend steal off to Dunkirk to help rescue the desperate remnants of the British army trapped between the advancing Germans and the English Channel.In addition to providing a very good mystery, Winspear does a smashing job describing the bravery exhibited by everyday Britons as the fear of invasion becomes ever more real. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
