Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear

Upon the recommendation of a couple of my trusted literary friends, I picked up the first in the Maisie Dobbs series, published in 2003. What a treat it was to read something not required for a book club or lecture series. 

In 1929 in London, Maisie Dobbs is in business as a private investigator. She has been hired by a man who suspects that his wife is carrying on an affair with another man. In following the woman, she finds herself in a cemetery and watches her lay flowers on the grave of a man whose headstone only reads Vincent. Vivid memories cascade into Maisie's mind and Winspear uses it as a flashback technique to give Maisie's backstory. 

The daughter of a Frankie, a costermonger and eventually a groomsman, Maisie was sent to live with Lady Rowan Compton, a wealthy philanthropist  to add to some income for the family. Maisie's work ethic and intelligence was recognized by Lady Rowan and she offered Maisie the opportunity to be tutored by Dr. Maurice Blanche. He also is impressed with her propensity for learning and encourages and prepares her to take the entrance exams for Cambridge. Maisie enters Girton College at Cambridge and makes friends with Priscilla Everndon, who introduces her to Captain Lynch. At Priscilla's urging and as a result of losing a close friend to a bombing during the war, Maisie enlists as a nurse and is deployed to France. As it would happen she reconnects with Captain Lynch and they fall in love and he proposes.  

Between the flashbacks and the present time, the story of Maisie becomes clear and her detective skills, honed by Dr. Blanche lead her to uncover the mystery of Vincent and so many other young wounded war veterans. Throughout the present day scenes the reader is plagued by the question as to what happened to Captain Lynch and is grateful for the reveal at the end of the book. 

Winspear's Maisie series is now on book 17. The series has been touted as in the mystery genre, but there was more introduction of the main character in the first book than mystery. I will be anxious to read book #2 to see how Maisie is developed as a private investigator and solver of mysteries. 

 

The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid by Lawrence Wright

 Living through 2020 and into 2021 with all the sickness and death surrounding us has been stressful and puzzling. Why has the most advanced country in the world not been able to deal with the catastrophic pandemic that has plagued us? In The Plague Year Wright postulates how we arrived at the state that we are in and how things could have been different. 

Beginning from the beginning in Wuhan, China, he chronicles the onset of the novel Coronavirus to the Insurrection of January 6, 2021. He focuses on all aspects of the pandemic from scientific to political to the economic impact of the disease and the way it was handled. His research was in depth and relied on accounts from behind the scene sources who knew intimately what was being said and done on the national and international fronts. The reader can clearly see how the devastating results of how information and actions were not handled in a timely and expedient way. The impact of this and the inattention that was paid to President Obama's document, “Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents” created a situation that left our country vastly unprepared in handling a pandemic. According to Wright, the Trump administration "jettisoned the playbook" How would the adherence to this playbook changed the scenario of the months of unpreparedness in the United States?

Wright illustrates some of the reversals of advice given to the American citizenry, especially in the practice of masking. It is understandable how that advice could seem controversial, but with the way the disease has manifested itself and how much the scientific knowledge of that has changed, it is justifiable. If only the leadership of the country would have grasped that and embraced the practice instead of ridiculing it, deaths and serious illness may have been mitigates. Wright contends that the president acted not as a leader, but as a "saboteur." 

Countless times during the course of the book, the reader ponders the "what if" and "if only" feelings. At those times, it is hard not to become angry for what might have been. This chronicle of the first year of the pandemic is a must read to understand in a comprehensible way how we have lived and died through this terrible time.