The Comfort of Ghosts by Jacqueline WinspearBook Synopsis “A milestone in historical mystery fiction as Maisie Dobbs takes her final bow!The Comfort of Ghosts completes Jacqueline Winspear’s ground-breaking and internationally bestselling series. Psychologist and investigator Maisie Dobbs unravels a profound mystery from her past in a war-torn nation grappling with its future. 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. Maisie Dobbs visits the mansion on behalf of the owners and discovers that a demobilized soldier, ill and reeling from his experiences overseas, has taken shelter with the group. Maisie is deeply puzzled by the children’s reticence. They are evasive when telling their stories and, more mysteriously, they appear to possess unarmed combat skills one might expect of trained adults in wartime. Her 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 aircraft. As Maisie picks apart 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. The award-winning Maisie Dobbs series has garnered hundreds of thousands of followers around the world, readers drawn to a woman who is of her time, yet familiar in ours—and who inspires with her resilience and capacity for endurance. This final assignment of her own choosing not only opens a new future for Maisie and her family, but serves as a fascinating portrayal of the challenges facing the people of Britain at the close of the Second World War.”

My Review

As you all know I do love a Maisie Dobbs story, having read all the books in this fab historical fiction series by Jacqueline Winspear. It’s quite sad to be reviewing this final book, as I’ve always looked forward to catching with Maisie, Billy and Priscilla over the years. It’s a bit like saying goodbye to faithful friends.

As the above synopsis states it’s set in London in October 1945, in the aftermath of World War Two, when Britain  is struggling to recover for the devastation of the Blitz and everything that came with it. Maisie finds herself involved with four terrified young squatters, as well as a strange demobbed soldier who’s just joined them in the London mansion.

As usual Maisie gets stuck in straight away to help the four young people, as well as the soldier, who turns to out to be someone who she’s been trying to find for a while. Later on in the book there’s another mystery that she needs to solve for personal reasons, but isn’t sure if she wants to drag up the past and all the painful memories attached to it.

I loved the mysteries throughout the book and the way Maisie went about resolving the issues, including getting her best friend Priscilla involved and other characters that have appeared through the years.

I also really enjoyed the way Jacqueline Winspear revealed aspects of post war Britain that I’d never considered before. For instance I’d never thought about the wide-scale problem of homelessness and squatters in London, and other parts of the country, but it makes perfect sense considering all the destruction from the Blitz in 1941 and then the V1 and V2 rockets that followed later on.

Even though it was a bittersweet read, it was a wonderful ending to a favourite series, full of hope for a brighter future for all my favourite characters.

I definitely recommend the series, especially if you enjoy historical fiction set in WW1, WW2 and now Post War Britain.

Thanks so much to Josie Rushin at Allison & Busby for my gorgeous hardback copy.

Book 1 of 20 Books of Summer

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