Among the Mad by Jacqueline WinspearMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Three and a half stars.
Maisie and Billy are innocent bystanders when a WW1 veteran explodes a bomb in London. Then an anonymous letter is sent to senior cabinet members, mentioning Maisie's name, threatening terrible consequences if the government doesn't announce wide reaching plans to support ex-servicemen. When the government fails to respond by the deadline the terrorist starts escalating matters and it becomes clear that he has the knowledge and skills to create poison gases which could kill half of London.
Maisie is brought in by Special Branch to give her unorthodox assistance to catch this man before he can carry out his threat. Her analysis of the handwriting, writing style, and appearance of the paper leads her to believe that he may have been injured in the war, and perhaps have sought or received psychiatric treatment.
It's a race against time which will lead Maisie to secret government poison gas laboratories and uncovering some nasty secrets about war.
This was good, but all the descriptions of horrible deaths due to poison gas make pretty grim reading.
Also, in light of also having read the next book in this series, I get the feeling that the author was under pressure to give Maisie a love interest as there are several interested gentlemen in this book.
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