Birds of a Feather
by Jacqueline Winspear
Published by Penguin Books
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Reviewed by Julie Failla Earhart
Jacqueline Winspear brings her delightful and refreshing female sleuth, Maisie Dobbs, back for a second adventure in Birds of a Feather. The title of this novel was curious because Maisie kept referring to coincidences not as a random happening but at “messengers of truth.” This threw me off a little as I know that the fourth installment in this series is titled Messenger of Truth. Could Winspear have been doing a little foreshadowing? I guess I’ll have to wait and see.
In Birds of a Feather, Maisie has been hired by Joseph Waite, a wealthy and influential businessman and philanthropist, to locate and bring home his daughter Charlotte. Never mind that Charlotte is a grown woman. Waite thinks, no, believes, that Charlotte should be where he can keep an eye on her. Not that Charlotte needs it; she is a natural-born leader like her father. Waite has his reasons that I won’t mention so as not to spoil a good read.
As Maisie and her assistant Billy Beale begin their investigation, they soon stumble into the murder investigation of one of Charlotte’s finishing-school friends. And it seems that the other two girls with whom Charlotte was close to before the Great War (WWI) have also turned up dead in recent weeks. Who could be killing them and why? What could four spoiled rich girls have done to warrant murder? Maisie and Billy are determined to find out, but the key question that remains is: Is Charlotte next?
A small piece of over-looked evidence at each of the three murder scenes leads Maisie and Billy on a quest to find out what is truly behind Charlotte’s disappearance. Maisie has her hands full when she realizes that her beloved assistant is once again turning to drugs to ease the pain in his war-injured leg.
I enjoyed Birds of a Feather and I look forward to reading Maisie’s next adventure. There were a tad too many details in the first half of this episode, but I think I learned more about life in England after WWI. What was chilling for me was to learn that the reason Charlotte’s friends were killed, and Charlotte next on the list, is a historical fact and one that is left out of all the history books I’ve ever read.
Armchair Interviews says: Most interesting read with a lot of historical facts.
Author’s Web site: http://www.JacquelineWinspear.com