THE COMFORT OF GHOSTS - Jacqueline Winspear


Author Jacqueline Winspear wraps up her Masie Dobbs series with this, book number eighteen. She addresses this decision to end the series in her introduction, acknowledging that fans may not be happy with the decision but why she's made the decision.

It is 1945, London, and Maisie discovers four youngsters squatting in an abandoned home - a home that the owners have asked Maisie to check on. The four orphans are terrified of being discovered and distrustful of Maisie, though Maisie recognizes they are still 'good' children as they've taken care of a British soldier who stumbled upon them while in the throes of what we would today refer to as PTSD.

Maisie also chases some ghosts of the past - she learns that her first husband, James, had a son with Enid whom he never spoke about.

It's hard not to review the entire series of Maisie Dobbs in this wrap-up volume. Especially hard given that much of this book is a wrap-up in itself. It creates a bit of an odd paradigm because the book doesn't have a lot of story, and the one that's there - about James having a son Maisie didn't know about (James and Maisie had a good marriage, though, so why did this never come up?) was unnecessary.  It didn't really add anything to the book or to the series.

As the final book in the long-running, beloved-by-many series, the book seems to try to wrap up a number of stories, or at least give us some finality to the characters (and there are a lot of them) rather than providing an exciting Maisie Dobbs mystery as has (presumably) happened over the previous seventeen books.

I'm not a huge Maisie Dobbs fan, but my wife is.  She was much more disappointed in this than I was.

Looking for a good book? The Comfort of Ghosts is the final book in the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear. Providing a lot of closure to the series fans means you'll want to be very familiar with the characters throughout the previous seventeen books. As a standalone story it leaves a lot to be desired.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

3-1/2 stars

* * * * * *

The Comfort of Ghosts

author: Jacqueline Winspear

series: Maisie Dobbs #18

publisher: Soho Crime

ISBN: 9781641296069

hardcover, 341 pages

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