Maisie Dobbs
by Jacqueline Winspear
Honestly, I tried to like these books. I love “cozy” British murder mysteries, and have read every single Ngaio Marsh title, every single Dorothy L. Sayers book about Lord Peter, every novel and short story by Edmund Crispin, and yet I have the good taste to shun Agatha Christie, because a) she wasn’t as good a writer as the above authors and b) she didn’t play fair with her clues. I was looking for a new author to love, and had briefly flirted with a couple of authors (P. D. James: too violent. Patricia Wentworth: dull characters). So it seemed that a modern author trying a bit of “Golden Age” ‘teckery might be worth a read, even though I’d been sadly disappointed by another author’s series, Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody books.
Sad to say, Maisie Dobbs is a dud. The first book starts out promisingly enough, but our enterprising Miss Dobbs seems to have a lot of unusual abilities and arcane interests; she apparently has some sort of psychic or empathic abilities and can intuit a person’s emotional state by imitating their body language. Also, she’s a terribly up-to-date thing as far as transcendental meditation, Pilates, and other “modern” New Age pursuits go. Yes, these things existed in the 30’s; they were studied by a few cognoscenti in London and New York, and there were yogis living in Britain who taught meditation and other aspects of Higher Knowledge and theosophical thought. Yes, yes, yes. And our Miss Dobbs happens to be the protoge’ of the one man in Britain in a position to bring her into contact with the cognoscenti and the yogi and the creator of the Pilates method, so she can be 60 or so years ahead of Madonna.
I haven’t run across any references to the Kabbalah yet, though there’s still plenty of time.
The first book sets up Maisie’s story, introduces the characters that make up her world, and pretty much tells everything that ever happened to Maisie in very lengthy flashback chapters, and eventually she gets around to solving her first case as a solo practitioner of the “psychological detective’s” art. Also, a male character who will no doubt turn out to be a love interest is casually introduced.
Birds of a Feather (Maisie Dobbs Mysteries (Paperback))
by Jacqueline Winspear
The second book is the one I’m hung up on; I slogged through the first one, but lost interest in this one at about the halfway mark (I’m normally a fast reader, but these books are very put-downable). The plot concerns a young heiress who has disappeared; she seems to be involved with some other young women with varying and highly esoteric interests who’ve turned up murdered. I lost patience with the “psychic empath” feature of Maisie’s character, because it bore such an unfortunate resemblance to a plot point in a certain kind of science-fiction “fanfic” story called a “Mary Sue.”
That is, a young woman of unusual abilities who is clearly a stand-in for the author, except that she’s better looking, gets all the men, has an unusual mixture of odd abilities, and has psychic abilities to boot. Because of my background as a Highlander fan, and because I know a few people who write fairly well-regarded fanfic (at least in the small community of fanfic aficionadas), I’ve been exposed to some awful dreck promising works needing a little polish in the past (not talking about my friend Jill’s stuff; this was written by someone from Seattle years back).
I’m sorry, Ms. Winspear, I’d like to like Maisie more, but she reminds me of a character I encountered about 10 years ago who was immortal, beautiful, psychic, deadly with any kind of blade, expert in all martial arts, and had Duncan MacLeod, Richie Ryan, Methos, Joe Dawson, and some random k’immie guy wrapped around her finger. I’ll get around to finishing “Birds of a Feather,” but I won’t buy any more books featuring Miss Maisie Dobbs: she’s just too “Mary Sue Dobbs” for my taste.
For those who dare:
Mary Sue: The Stories
Mary Sue: The Drinking Game
The minute Maisie got ESP, I was out of there. The progressive ahead-of-her-time stuff was annoying enough, but the psychic stuff indeed turns her into the lilac-eyed Mary Sue of yore.
Ecccch.
Oh, and I highly recommend S.J. Rozan. Not British mysteries, but terrific; they’re about a partnership between a woman and a man, and the books alternate POV between the two. Do read them in order, though.
I also like Laurie King, for the most part, if you haven’t read her. She has a series about a female detective in San Francisco; that’s pretty good. Her standalone books are also strong. Her Mary Russell series (which involves Sherlock Holmes) is probably the best-known one, and while I think the first two or three Russell books are outstanding, I haven’t much cared for them after that for plot reasons I won’t spoil here. But the first few are well worth reading.