With the country in the grip of economic malaise, and worried about her business, Maisie Dobbs is relieved to accept an apparently straightforward assignment from an old friend to investigate a potential land purchase. Her inquiries take her to a picturesque village in Kent during the hop-picking season, but beneath its pastoral surface she finds evidence that something is amiss. Mysterious fires erupt in the village with alarming regularity, and a series of petty crimes suggests a darker criminal element at work. As Maisie discovers, the villagers are bitterly prejudiced against outsiders who flock to Kent at harvest-time--even more troubling, they seem possessed by the legacy of a war-time Zeppelin raid. Maisie grows increasingly suspicious of a peculiar secrecy that shrouds the village, and ultimately she must draw on all her finely honed skills of detection to solve one of her most intriguing cases.
1 of 1 copy available
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Creators
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Series
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Publisher
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Awards
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Release date
February 19, 2008 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780792753100
- File size: 267924 KB
- Duration: 09:18:10
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Jacqueline Winspear adds a fascinating episode to the Maisie Dobbs series, which justly gains fans with each new story. Orlagh Cassidy began the audio series with PARDONABLE LIES and continues her appealing portraits of the characters. She smoothly, and quite elegantly, delivers a variety of accents of the Kent countryside gentry and townsfolk, as well as the Londoners of different classes. The festive spirit of the "hop-picking season" covers some dark secrets in a rural village, as the legacy of loss in WW I haunts many who survived those years. Cassidy nicely conveys Maisie's honest wisdom, sensible approach to her "inquiries," and spirited manners. The details of village life, a community of Gypsies, and the shifts in attitudes of the late 1920s make a vivid audio mystery. R.F.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine -
November 26, 2007
In Edgar-finalist Winspear’s enjoyable fifth installment in her Maisie Dobbs series (after 2006’s Messenger of Truth
), the psychologist/investigator digs deep into a village’s long-buried secrets. Maisie’s benefactor, tycoon James Compton, wants to buy an estate in the bucolic hamlet of Heronsdene, but is wary after a string of mysterious fires. Maisie soon proves Compton’s suspicions correct when she encounters the shady current landowner and a vaguely menacing band of Gypsies in town for the seasonal harvest. The locals are also curiously tight-lipped about Heronsdene’s wartime tragedy, when a zeppelin raid wiped out a family. Teasing out Heronsdene’s secrets will take all the intrepid former nurse’s psychological skills and test her ability to navigate between the Gypsy and gorja
(non-Gypsy) worlds. Winspear vividly evokes England between the wars, when the old order crumbled and new horizons beckoned working women like her appealing heroine. Even if a few of the plot twists prove predictable, this jaunt back to a bygone era is as satisfying as a spin in Maisie’s MG. -
Starred review from March 31, 2008
Maisie Dobbs travels to Kent to investigate, among other things, a series of fires, a family of Dutch bakers who were killed during WWI in a zeppelin attack and the theft of some silver. Hop-picking has brought everyone to the area, from Londoners to Gypsies. Orlagh Cassidy, who also read Messenger of Truth
, not only captures a range of London and Kentish accents, but she also individualizes even the most minor characters. The lilt of a Danish luthier is perfect, and the dozen or so villagers interviewed by Dobbs have their own rhythms of speech and tone. Cassidy's rendition of Roma words comes across as authentic. This engrossing mystery will be hard to put down, and the listener will be sad when the final, lively strains of a fiddle are heard. Simultaneous release with the Holt hardcover (Reviews, Nov. 26).
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