(Maisie Dobbs #12)
Journey to Munich by Jacqueline Winspear (2016)
****
A Journey to Munich (2016) is the 12th novel in Jacqueline Winspear’s series about private investigator Maisie Dobbs. The story in this novel is set in 1938, just before WWII. My review(s) of some of the previous book(s) in Jacqueline Winspear’s series about private investigator Maisie Dobbs can be found here. My opinion about the series has varied a bit from one book to another. Along the way, I have sometimes felt that the background story took over too much, and went off in directions that caused problems for the author as well for the reader. However, with this book, I felt that both Maise and the author seemed to be kind of “back on track” again. While we are still getting filled in on background details in Maisie’s life, the focus in this book is on her current mission, involving a journey to Nazi Germany as an agent for the British Secret Service, under assumed identity as the daughter of a British subject held prisoner in the concentration camp at Dachau near Munich. The German government has agreed to release the prisoner, but only if he is handed over to a family member. His real daughter is dead, though. But the Germans don’t know that… So the question is, can Maisie do a good enough job of pretending to be her? I found the story interesting and well told. For me perhaps also a bit extra interesting as I once visted the memorial site and museum at Dachau myself (on a tourist journey back in 1990).
(I read the book on Kindle in September 2017.)
5 comments:
This is a favorite mystery series of mine and I enjoyed this book. I am pretty caught up with the series and if anyone hasn't read it I suggest starting with the first book.
Another one I have never heard of! And yet it was a New York Times best seller only two years ago! Shame on me!
I have not yet read any of the Maisie Dobbs mysteries, but I guess this is not the one to start.
Do you know whether the story is based on a real case?
There are soooo many books in this world, Ginny... Not a chance on earth that we'll ever find the time to read them all. (Which is why I've decided to believe that surely, good books must go to heaven as well...)
Meike, Winspear says in an Author's Note at the back of the book that the novel was "inspired by" a story once told to her mother by a man who had been through something similar. "Journey to Munich is not his story, but it only takes one small nugget of an idea to create a whole novel. My mother's story was the nugget". J.W.
I think, because Maisie herself is kind of "starting over" in this novel (and is also doing a bit of reflecting on her own past) one could probably read this one without having read the previous 11. (Not all easy for me to tell, though, as I have read them all.)
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