The Comfort of Ghosts (Maisie Dobbs #18) - Book Review

 

The Comfort of Ghosts
(Maisie Dobbs, Book 18)
by  Jacqueline Winspear (2024)
Narrated by: Orlagh Cassidy
Audio book, 10 hrs and 6 mins

Jacqueline Winspear was born in 1955 and raised in Cranbrook, in Kent, England. She emigrated to the United States in 1990. She has stated that her childhood awareness of her grandfather's suffering in World War I led to an interest in that period - and to writing the Maise Dobbs series. 

Her character Maisie Dobbs was born a working class girl in England, but received an unusual education thanks to the patronage of her aristocratic employer, who took her on as a housemaid from when she was just in her early teens. During WWI Maisie worked as a nurse, and after that set up her own business as a private investigator. She grows older throughout the series of novels; and the stories and cases that Maise gets involved in reflect the times, from WWI through WW2. 

This 18th novel in the series is set just after the end of WWII, and I suspect it may be intended to be the last. Anyway it sums up quite a lot from the whole time period, and the ups and downs of Maisie's own life.

London, 1945: Four adolescent orphans with a dark wartime history are squatting in a vacant Belgravia mansion—the owners having fled London under heavy Luftwaffe bombing. Psychologist and Investigator Maisie Dobbs visits the mansion on behalf of the owners and discovers that a demobilized soldier, gravely ill and reeling from his experiences overseas, has taken shelter with the group.

Maisie’s quest to bring comfort to the youngsters and the ailing soldier brings to light a decades-old mystery concerning Maisie’s first husband, James Compton, who was killed while piloting an experimental fighter aircraft. As Maisie unravels the threads of her dead husband’s life, she is forced to examine her own painful past and question beliefs she has always accepted as true.

As I have read all of the earlier books (some borrowed, some in paperback, some on Kindle, and some as audio books) over a period of 20 years, it's hard for me to guess how this last novel might come across to a new reader who has not read any of the previous ones. There is quite a bit of repetition of details in this one though, so perhaps it might actually work as an "independent" read as well. 

For my own part, I'm thinking of going back and maybe get additional audio book editions of some that I don't already have in that format. I think they have all been recorded by Orlagh Cassidy now; and I like her narration.