After her husband's death on a Canadian airfield and a stint working as a nurse in a remote Spanish village, private investigator Maisie Dobbs has returned to England. As she contemplates the next steps in her personal and professional life, two old acquaintances at the Secret Service tap Maisie for a sensitive mission: retrieving an engineer imprisoned at Dachau by the Nazis. In Journey to Munich, her 12th Maisie Dobbs novel, Jacqueline Winspear paints a keen picture of a woman and a country struggling to remain calm in the face of sweeping changes.
Winspear (Leaving Everything Most Loved) has brought Maisie full circle in some ways with this novel: she is back in England as an independent woman, considering a return to her investigative career. (Longtime readers will appreciate the reappearance of Maisie's colorful supporting cast.) But Munich in 1938 is new territory for both Winspear and her heroine, who must employ her varied skills--diplomacy, nursing, self-defense--to get herself and her frail charge out of the country alive. Complicating matters is a request from a family of Maisie's acquaintance: their grown daughter Elaine, a reckless society darling, is also in Munich and may be in danger. Maisie is forced to set aside personal grievances and solve a complicated international puzzle, its pieces seeming to multiply by the day.
Deftly blending historical detail with taut suspense and her usual thoughtful exploration of Maisie's inner life, Winspear turns in another satisfying entry in her beloved series. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams