Review: Leaving Everything Most Loved

Leaving Everything Most Loved by Jacqueline Winspear
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Maisie Dobbs is finding that inheriting property and great wealth is not the boon that others would imagine. She still finds herself conflicted between her humble upbringing, the daughter of a servant who was herself a maid, through her education which led her to her current profession of detective and psychologist, and her inheritance which has led her to mix with the aristocracy and a relationship with James Compson, the son of her former employers. James is keen to marry Maisie but something is preventing her from accepting her proposal, although it doesn't stop them from being lovers and living together in his mansion, although she maintains her own, less glamorous, apartment. Maisie is also conflicted because James is involved with a man who is developing fighter planes for the war against Hitler which they fear is inevitable, while Maisie applauds their patriotism, he is also responsible for the deaths of at least two men who died to protect his secrets, something which Maisie can't forgive. Added to which, Maisie's trusty sidekick Billy is not recovering from his previous beating and is not performing his job as usual.

Maisie is approached by an Indian man, a former soldier in WW1, whose sister Usha was shot two months earlier. Although highly educated, and brought to England to act as a governess to an English family, Usha has been living in a house for Indian servants who have been let go by their English employers and working as a daily maid to earn her keep. While investigating Usha's murder Maisie must also take on one of Billy's cases which he has let slip, involving the disappearance of a teenage boy.

This read very much like the final book in a series, there were (endless) recaps of Maisie's career to-date, her love life, her inheritance, her service during the war etc. Also, with her pondering over travelling to India and the situation with Billy and James it really feels like the end of an era (although of course I know there are several more books - by popular demand or did Jacqueline Winspear change publishers?). So much so, that the mystery seems a bit of an afterthought, and I'm still not entirely sure why Usha's friend was also killed or even if it was the same killer. Anyway, I have moaned about how every book in this series seems to relate to WW1 (except the last one) and when it doesn't I'm still not happy!

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