Pardonable Lies (#3 Maisie Dobbs) by Jacqueline Winspear - #BookReview

The young policewoman stood in the corner of the room. Plain whitewashed walls, a heavy door, a wooden table with two chairs, and one small window with frosted glass rendered the room soul-less...

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London, 1930. Maisie Dobbs, the renowned psychologist and investigator, receives a most unusual request. She must prove that Sir Cecil Lawton's son Ralph really is dead.

This is a case that will challenge Maisie in unexpected ways, for Ralph Lawton was an aviator shot down by enemy fire in 1917. To get to the bottom of the mystery, Maisie must travel to the former battlefields of norther France, where she  served as a nurse in the Great War and where ghosts of her past still linger. As her investigation moves closer to the truth, Maisie soon uncovers the secrets and lies that some people would prefer remain buried.

I am really enjoying this series of books. I read and reviewed the first in the series, Maisie Dobbs, back in July and then recently read, Birds of a Feather too. In Pardonable Lies, Jacqueline continues her tale of the exquisite Maisie Dobbs.

Maisie is one of the most likable characters I have ever come across in fiction. She is privileged yet well grounded, methodical yet slightly chaotic and determined yet compassionate and it is this juxtaposition of characteristics that make her so easy to identify with.

Set in the 1930's, I have to constantly remind myself that this is a modern book such is Ms. Winspear's skill in bringing the period to life.

If I had to categorize this series I would say they are a cross between Agatha Christie and Alexander McCall Smith and if you enjoy either of those authors you will love the Maisie Dobbs series. I highly recommend this book and am sure you will enjoy it too.

Update:  Since publishing this review I have also read Everything Most Loved, and Messenger of Truth. Please click on the titles to read my reviews.

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ISBN:  978-0719567360

 Publisher: John Murray

Formats:  e-book, audio, hardback and paperback

No. of Pages:  352 (paperback)

About the Author:

Jacqueline Winspear was born and raised in the county of Kent, England. Following higher education at the University of London’s Institute of Education, Jacqueline worked in academic publishing, in higher education and in marketing communications in the UK. She emigrated to the United States in 1990, and while working in business and as a personal/professional coach, Jacqueline embarked upon a life-long dream to be a writer—she subsequently became a regular contributor to journals covering international education and travel, and has published articles in the Washington Post, Huffington Post, The Daily Beast and other publications. Her short stories have appeared in magazines internationally, and Jacqueline has recorded her essays for KQED radio in San Francisco. She has contributed to several anthologies of essays and short stories.

Jacqueline’s grandfather was severely wounded and shell-shocked at The Battle of the Somme in 1916, and it was as she understood the extent of his suffering that, even in childhood, Jacqueline became deeply interested in the “war to end all wars” and its aftereffects. As an adult her interest deepened to the extent that, though she did not set out to write a “war” novel, it came as no surprise that this part of history formed the backdrop of Maisie Dobbs and other books in the series. The unique and engaging character of Maisie Dobbs is very much a woman of her generation. She has come of age at a time when women took on the toil of men and claimed independence that was difficult to relinquish. It was a time when many women remained unmarried, simply because a generation of men had gone to war and not come home.

In her own words “The war and its aftermath provide fertile ground for a mystery. Such great social upheaval allows for the strange and unusual to emerge and a time of intense emotions can, to the writer of fiction, provide ample fodder for a compelling story, especially one concerning criminal acts and issues of guilt and innocence. After all, a generation is said to have lost its innocence in The Great War. The mystery genre provides a wonderful vehicle for exploring such a time,” explains Ms. Winspear.

Together with The Comfort of Ghosts (June 2024), Jacqueline has written 18 novels in the award-winning Maisie Dobbs historical mystery series, including the New York Times bestsellers A Sunlit Weapon, The Consequences of Fear, The American Agent, To Die But Once, In This Grave Hour, Journey to Munich, A Dangerous Place, Leaving Everything Most Loved, Elegy for Eddie, A Lesson in Secrets, The Mapping of Love and Death, Among The Mad and An Incomplete Revenge, as well as four other National Bestselling novels. Her standalone novel, The Care and Management of Lies, was also a New York Times and National Bestseller, and a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Her new standalone novel, The White Lady, was released March 2023.

Jacqueline has published two non-fiction books: What Would Maisie Do? (2018) based upon the series, and a memoir, This Time Next Year We’ll Be Laughing (2020). In addition, her recent published essays include Writing About War, for which she interviewed writers including Kate Atkinson, Rhys Bowen, Jeff Shaara and Adam Hochschild, exploring the impact of writing about war on the author, and Women On Fire, about women working in wildfire management. Her essay on writing historical mysteries appears in the anthology/handbook from Mystery Writers of America: How To Write A Mystery edited by Lee Child (April 2021). In 2024, she wrote Wars and Moments in Time: A Brief Look at the Historical Scope of the Maisie Dobbs Series.

(author media courtesy of the author's website https://jacquelinewinspear.com/)

(all opinions are my own)

Sugar and Snails by Anne Goodwin

At fifteen, Diana Dodsworth took the opportunity to radically alter the trajectory of her life and escape the constraints of her small-town existence. Thirty years on, she can’t help scratching at her teenage decision like a scabbed wound. 

To safeguard her secret, she’s kept other people at a distance ... until Simon Jenkins sweeps in on a cloud of promise and possibility. But his work is taking him to Cairo, and he expects Di to fly out for a visit. She daren’t return to the city that changed her life; nor can she tell Simon the reason why. 
Sugar and Snails takes the reader on a poignant journey from Diana’s misfit childhood, through tortured adolescence to a triumphant mid-life coming-of-age that challenges preconceptions about bridging the gap between who we are and who we feel we ought to be.Visit her website and blog at http://annegoodwin.weebly.com



As promised, this is the first review from the list of books in my previous blog posting. 

This book is actually quite difficult to review without giving the plot away so forgive me if I sound a little vague at times. Suffice to say that the plot is original and surprising and Ms Goodwin confronts the issues which face her protagonist with sensitivity and insight. 

She is also an excellent storyteller and the plot unfolds deftly in her hands. She has  diligently done her research in putting together this fine novel. 

Diana is a strong and complex character and it was not obvious to me as a reader what her secret is.  Her story is gripping and I loved the way I came to a gradual realisation concerning her refusal to return to Cairo.  In many novels I can second guess what is coming but with this novel the author unravels for us the issues and concerns that Diana confronts in a way that kept me reading in order to discover what was going on.

Ultiimately, this is a story of self discovery which challenges the reader to consider issues of equality and the way in which individuals are conventionalised by the society in which they live. It also deals with the enormity of dealing with decisions that we make when we are young and the impact that has on the rest of our lives.

Well done to Anne Goodwin for producing such a readable and challenging book. 

I would love to hear your thoughts on this book when you have read it.

ISBN:  978-1908600479

Publisher:  Inspired Quill

Price (today on Amazon.co.uk) Paperback: £8.99   Kindle: £3.49

About the Author:

Anne Goodwin loves fiction for the freedom to contradict herself and has been scribbling stories ever since she could hold a pencil. During her career as an NHS clinical psychologist her focus was on helping other people tell their neglected stories to themselves. Now that her short fiction publication count has overtaken her age, her ambition is to write and publish enough novels to match her shoe size. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was published in July 2015 by Inspired Quill.

Books, books and more books

I have been out of the blogging loop for a little while. Recently, life has got in the way of my blogging as I've had some health issues going on followed by some very successful surgery which means that I am now feeling great and looking forward to getting back to blogging about my reading.

I won't bore you all with the details of recent weeks. However, one of the good things to have come from all this convalescing is that it's given me plenty of time to read and I have managed to get through quite a few books. I have been immeasurably grateful for my kindle and for my husband who has made many library trips to keep me in reading material.

What’s happened to all the lovely books I have adorning my shelves, I hear you ask. Well, in addition to everything that's been going on we are also moving house and so all my precious books have been packed into boxes ready for moving and rather than partially unpacking again I have relied on my local library and my kindle books to sate my reading appetite (as tempting as it was to sneak a few back out of the boxes.)

Well, that’s more than enough about me. Let me tell you about what I have been reading in the past few weeks.  I will be coming back to review my favourites from this selection sometime soon but in the meantime, I thought you might like to see what I have been reading.

Snowdrops by A.D. Miller

Perfect Daughter by Amanda Prowse

Mariana by Susanna Kearsley

Reunion with Death by Sheila Connelly

Coastliners by Joanne Harris

I am China by Xiaolu Guo

The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal

Lessons in Laughing Out Loud by Rowan Coleman

The House at Sea's End and A Room Full of Bones - both by Elly Griffiths

Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear

Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healy

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller

The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats by Hesh Kestin

Sugar and Snails by Anne Goodwin

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

The Ritual Bath by Faye Kellerman

These are not in any order of preference so I shall keep you guessing for the moment as to which are my favourites. However, you all know my reading tastes by now. Can you guess which are the ones I really enjoyed reading?

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Marie-Laure LeBlanc, the daughter of a locksmith, has been blind since the age of six. Her father builds a perfect miniature of their Paris neighbourhood so she can learn to navigate her way home. But when the Nazis invade, father and daughter flee carrying a dangerous secret.

Werner Pfennig is a German orphan, destined to labour in the same mine where his father died. But then he finds and repairs a broken radio and suddenly life blazes with possibility. His talents win him a place at an elite military academy, but can he pursue his dream whatever the cost?

Hundreds of miles away in a walled city by the sea, an old man listens to a long-lost voice and discovers new worlds without ever setting foot outside his home. And yet impending danger will not allow him to remain shut in for ever.

This book is set in Europe during a time when war dominated everything. It is a wonderful demonstration of how lives can coincide in the most unexpected of ways.

I was completely gripped by this very excellent novel from start to finish. The prose was beautiful and not a word was wasted. Every sentence had real meaning and I frequently found myself re-reading sentences and paragraphs simply for the beauty of how they were constructed on the page.

The atmosphere was tangible and I felt as though I was actually there, living the lives of these two young people who were forced to grow up in war torn Europe. Consequently, I felt very in touch with Marie-Laure and Werner and writing this book so that the reader could identify with both the German and French point of view lifts this book well out of the ordinary.

There is something very special about this novel and I highly recommend it. This is the first book that I have read by Anthony Doerr and I guarantee that it will not be the last. I only wonder why I have not read anything by this excellent author before.

About the Author:

Anthony Doerr is the best-selling and prize winning author of The Shell Collector, About Grace, Four Seasons in Rome and Memory Wall.

In 2007 Granta named him as one of their 21 Best Young American Novelists and in 2011 he won the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Prize. Doerr lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife and two sons.

The Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths

Forensics Expert Ruth Galloway is called in to investigate when builders, demolishing a large old house in Norwich, uncover the skeleton of a child - minus the skull - beneath a doorway. Is it some ritual sacrifice or just plain straightforward murder?

The house was once a children's home. DCI Harry Nelson meets the Catholic priest who used to run it. He tells him that two children did go missing forty years before - a girl and a boy. They were never found.

When carbon dating proves that the child's bones predate the children's home, Ruth is drawn more deeply into the case. But as spring turns to summer it becomes clear that someone is trying very hard to put her off the scent by frightening her half to death.

Having previously read the first in this series, The Crossing Places, which I enjoyed enormously, I was very keen to read The Janus Stone and continue with the story of Ruth Galloway. This was equally enjoyable and I loved that the book picks up pretty much straight after the first book and this provided a marvelous continuity to the story.

Ruth is a wonderful character. Her personal concerns are easy to identify with. She is a cat loving, overweight single woman and thinks about life in the same way that you or I might. The other characters are also realistically drawn - DCI Nelson is as down to earth a character as you could ever hope to read about and I loved the descriptions of Ruth's born-again Christian parents and her Druid friend, Cathbad. Every one of Elly Griffiths characters were well drawn and I felt like I understood each one of them.

I also loved the plot and read the whole book in a couple of sittings which is something I rarely do. It moves along at a good pace but I would not call it a page turner. Rather it was a book to be read and enjoyed without the frenzied pace that many crime thrillers have.

I have already ordered the next book in this series, The House at Sea's End, and am looking forward to reading it and getting to know the characters even better. I highly recommend this series to readers who enjoy crime fiction or archaeology.

ISBN: 978  1849162296

Publisher: Quercus Books

Price (based on today price for the paperback at Amazon.co.uk): £6.39

About the author:

Elly Griffiths' Ruth Galloway novels take for their inspiration Elly's husband, who gave up a city job to train as an archaeologist, and her aunt who lives on the Norfolk coast and who filled her niece's head with the myths and legends of that area.

She has two children and lives near Brighton.

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty six year old Jean Louise Finch (Scout) returns home from New York City to visit her ageing father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were  transforming the South, Jean Louise's homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town and the people dearest to her. Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt.

Since this book was published earlier this week there have been thousands of reviews written. I have deliberately avoided reading any of them so as not to affect my own judgement of this book but short of locking myself in a darkened room without any form of communication from the outside world it has been impossible not to have got the gist of the fact that the vast majority of these reviews have been negative.

Perhaps it is my contrary personality but I really wanted to like this book. Like many others I am a huge fan of To Kill a Mockingbird which I first read aged about thirteen and have reread many times since.

Harper Lee is a great writer as evidenced in To Kill a Mockingbird so it was hard for me to even begin to equate this sequel with the skill she showed in her first and only other book. My biggest disappointment was in the way she portrayed Jean Louise (aka Scout). Gone is the fiery young Scout who we all know and love and in walks Jean Louise who I think the author intended to portray as an opinionated and angry young woman. However, rather than possess the associated attributes of this persona Jean Louise comes over more as a moaning Minnie and quite frankly, I found her character rather tedious.

What I did like in this book were the flashbacks to Jean Louise's childhood. Here I glimpsed the characters and writer who exerted so much influence over me when I was in my teens.

Written in the 1950's and not published until 2016 does this book alter the way I have felt about To Kill a Mockingbird? Not one bit. It is vastly superior to this sequel and I have been a little in love with Atticus Finch for too many decades for that to change now.

ISBN:  9781785150289

Publisher: William Heinemann

Price: £18.99

About the Author: 

Harper Lee ws born in 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama. She is the author of the acclaimed To Kill a Mockingbirdand has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and numerous other literary awards and honours.

Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear

London, 1929. Having set herself up as a private investigator, Maisie Dobbs is relieved when her first client arrives. Christopher Davenham suspects that his wife is conducting an affair. But Maisie's investigations confound her expectations at every turn and she if forced by her findings to revisit her own turbulent experience of the Great War. For Maisie, the boundary between her private and professional life is suddenly blurred.

This is a world still reeling in the aftermath of war, a world in which many secrets lie buried. But Maisie is determined to hunt down the truth, however painful it might be.

Maisie is one of the most likable characters I have encountered in some time and I am very excited that this book is the first in a series. Sweet and heartwarming but feisty at the same time, it was impossible not to be rooting for her all through the book.

What I particularly liked was the way Ms Winspear initially drew me into the story through the plot. However, the narrative then shifts for about a third of the book and we are presented with Maisie's backstory and therefore, everything we may have assumed about her during the first part of the book is challenged.

Although simply written I did not guess the outcome of the story and there were still some surprises at the end. Wonderful writing and I can certainly envisage myself reading the twelve books in the series and I do not make a commitment like that very often. I already have the second book, Birds of a Feather, ordered from the library.

Purchase Link *

About the author:

Jacqueline Winspear was born and raised in Kent, England and now lives in California. The Maisie Dobbs mysteries have won great acclaim and have been nominated for several awards including the Edgar Award.

Purchase Link *

*Disclosure: I only recommend books I would buy myself and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post contains an affiliate link from which I may earn a small commission.