Saturdays With Kaye: In This Grave Hour by Jacqueline Winspear

In This Grave Hour by Jacqueline Winspear

The latest Maisie Dobbs novel begins as Neville Chamberlain declares war with Germany and London starts gearing up with air raid siren tests, allocation of gas masks, and night blackouts. Maisie is hurrying to her friend’s house to hear the anticipated announcement on the radio. War is, of course, unwelcome, as they all remember the last one and everyone has suffered some sort of loss. But, as they remind themselves, they came through it.

A phone call comes for Maisie from an acquaintance who wants to give her some investigation business. The caller, Dr. Francesca Thomas, is calling from inside Maisie’s flat, which she locked when she left.

The business has to do with some happenings during the last war when Great Britain accepted over a quarter of a million Belgian refugees, fleeing from German invasion. Most returned home after the war, but not all. Several thousand stayed, married, took jobs, and some even changed their names. Dr. Thomas herself is Belgian and tells Maisie that one of the former refugees has been murdered, shot in the back of the head. Scotland Yard doesn’t have the personnel to investigate his death and is treating it as a robbery gone wrong. Maisie suspects that Francesca isn’t being completely open with her, especially when another former Belgian is murdered. Maisie must follow the delicate threads from the past that connect the men, hoping her friend Francesca isn’t responsible for some of the death.

Meanwhile children are being evacuated from London in anticipation of the bombing that happened in WWI and some need a place to stay. One girl, brought to the family country estate, has arrived alone and is mute and dark-skinned. No one knows who she is or who her people are. Maisie is drawn to her, maybe dangerously so.

There is much detail here on wartime England and the people who lived through that dark period. History buffs and Maisie fans will love this.

Reviewed by Kaye George, author of Ella and the Ball in Once Upon a Fact, for Suspense Magazine