A Lesson in Secrets by Jacqueline Winspear

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


It is 1932 and Maisie Dobbs is recruited by Scotland Yard's Special Branch to go undercover as a junior lecturer at a Cambridge college to observe activities “not in the interests of His Majesty’s Government.” And sure enough, the college President is found dead in his office, another professor is secretly skulking off to London, and whisps of communism and nazi gatherings are in the air.



Winspear skillfully evokes England at the fulcrum between the wars: Hitler's seductive nationalism, the desperate desire for peace among nations, the hope for a better tomorrow. Observant, beguiling, astute and humorous by turns, Maisie is a delightful and multi-layered character---the perfect companion to lead the reader through these events.



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The Attenbury Emeralds by Jill Paton Walsh

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Lord Peter Wimsey sleuths again through the pen of Jill Paton Walsh. I thoroughly enjoyed this mystery which follows the Attenbury family emeralds as they are misplaced, stolen, swapped for paste copies, gambled away and recovered over several generations. I think Paton Walsh stays true to Dorothy L. Sayres' original characters and is adept at creating the witty repartee' and literary references so often found in the original Wimsey mysteries.



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