Book Review: Journey to Munich by Jacqueline Winspear

Journey to Munich (Maisie Dobbs #12)

By Jacqueline Winspear

Published by Harper and Sold by HarperCollins, March 29, 2016

Purchased and read on Amazon Kindle

Links: Amazon, B&N, Powell's

Rating: Four Stars (out of five)

So, there I was, back to blogging at a faster pace… for awhile.  Then, well, things got busy.  First of all, we had event after event at The New Job.  Then, as I think I’ve mentioned, I’m a pretty active adult recreational musician.  I both sing and play an instrument, and there was a week in there when I had a rehearsal or a performance every night.  Then I got a sinus infection.  So, as you can see, blogging fell by the wayside.  The good news, though, is that I haven’t stopped reading.

One of the books I read in the midst of all the busyness was Jacqueline Winspear’s latest entry in the Maisie Dobbs series.  I really, really like this series.  It’s quite sophisticated and well-written and, on the whole, the characters are much more psychologically complex than those in your average historical mystery series (that’s not a ding at other writers—just a compliment to Winspear).  The early Maisie Dobbs books are set in the 1930s and they explore the ongoing effects of World War I on the British public.  In the first 10 books, Maisie is a private detective whose business takes her all over England and occasionally across the channel.  Book 11, A Dangerous Place is a reboot of sorts; after losing a husband and a pregnancy, Maisie finds herself on Gibralter, where she functions, essentially, as a British spy (as well as having a mission of her own).

Journey to Munich continues the espionage plotline, as Maisie is sent to Munich to recover a British inventor who has been imprisoned by the Nazis for distributing anti-Hitler propaganda.  While there, Maisie also looks for the daughter of her nemesis, John Otterburn.  She runs into trouble with Nazi high command, of course, but she does not give up on either of her missions.

I really enjoyed this book.  A Dangerous Place felt sort of gloomy and weird to me, and I was glad to see Maisie back in action here.  I’m still not sure how I feel about Maisie as a spy, and I miss her interactions with her assistant Billy and receptionist Sandra.  I think there’s potential for Maisie to return to more mundane detecting, though, and this book sets the stage for that to happen while also allowing for the possibility that she’ll still work for the Secret Service from time to time. 

I do think the series has changed fundamentally, and that given its historical setting it almost had to.  World War II was devastating in very different ways from World War I, and Maisie’s social conscience won’t allow her not to be involved in some way.  I hope that as the war progresses, Maisie will use her skills to benefit both her country writ large and individual clients, paying or not, to whom she always been so personally and professionally committed.