The Consequences of Fear: A Maisie Dobbs Novel (Maisie Dobbs, 16)

I have loved getting to know Maisie Dobbs and her family and friends. It seems that Maisie is handling over the reins to Billy at the agency. She may still keep at her government job. The best thing is that she has now married Mark, so her happiness is somewhat ensured. It ends with December 7, 1941, when the Americans entered the war.

What can I say? This author has such a wonderful name...I so wish I'd had a name like hers...and her writing is as wonderful as her name! I Love these books like millions of others do....she writes the You Are There, in the story, witnessing it all. I wait for these books like waiting for Christmas...the joy...from the book 's covers to every page of the content. She is as accomplished as her characters at truly evoking the emotional depth and breadth of their feelings, experiences, emotions, intelligence and...their flaws...such humanitarian writing about people who could be real, someone one knows.I these books should be read in order to get the full force of the time, the characters nd the settings....but mostly for the beautiful narrative warmth of the stories. I am in love with all the characters she writes about who work with, love and surround Masks Dobbs. What a magnificent series. I would also recommend them all for an true education about the historical information the impart with a true sense of the times there are written about...a real feeling of being there. I cannot recommend this series and her stand alone and non fiction books nearly enough...Thank you Jacqueline Wins pear.

Twelve-year-old Freddie Hackett is the fastest runner in his school and has secured a job as a nighttime courier for British intelligence. As the bombs fall all over London, Freddie runs from one site to another through the rubble-strewn streets. And on one such run on October 3, 1941 he witnesses a brutal murder committed by a man with memorable scars on his face. Later, when delivering his message nearby, he must hand it over to none other than the killer. But it’s a dark night, illuminated only by the moon, and Freddie is a child, after all. Nobody believes him. Still, he persists. And when word reaches Maisie Dobbs’ assistant, Billy Beale, the man knows something is up. Soon, Maisie is on the case. Maisie is working now for British intelligence For Maisie, though, investigating the murder Freddie saw is just one of several demands on her time. Now in her early forties, the “psychologist and investigator” is working on call for Robbie MacFarlane in the Special Operations Executive. Her job is to interview candidates for insertion as espionage agents on the Continent. She’s required to certify that, even after they’ve successfully made their way through the rigorous training, they’re fully prepared psychologically for the risks ahead. Meanwhile, her three-year-old adoptive daughter, Anna, is living at home with Maisie’s father and mother-in-law in Kent. Maisie feels constant guilt at her inability to spend full-time with the charming little girl. And all the while she’s carrying on an increasingly passionate affair with an American embassy official named Mark Scott. Despite the fact that the murder Freddie witnessed somehow involves British intelligence, she can’t afford to overlook everything else in her life. In The Consequences of Fear, the sixteenth entry in the Maisie Dobbs series, Jacqueline Winspear skillfully follows all these threads of her heroine’s story for the two months between Freddie’s discovery and December 7, 1941. An intriguing cast of characters Readers of the earlier entries in Maisie’s story will be familiar with most of the characters in this novel. Maisie’s work life ** Billy Beale, a wounded veteran of the trench war in World War I who has taken on an ever-larger share in the agency’s investigative work. ** Robbie MacFarlane, a senior official in Scotland Yard’s Special Branch detailed to the newly-formed Special Operations Executive (SOE). There, he vets and trains agents for service behind the lines in France and elsewhere in Europe. Maisie has been working for British intelligence since 1938, “when she accepted an assignment that took her to Munich.” ** Detective Chief Superintendent Caldwell, Maisie’s principal contact at Scotland Yard, now consumed with confronting a wave of crime. (As Billy observes to Maisie, “This looting is terrible—and according to a...

I have read every one of Ms. Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs’ books. She tells a great and gripping story. The greatest compliment that I can give to a writer is “I really cared a lot about what happened to her characters”. That’s especially true here. Nobody had better not “mess” with Maisie. A reader has no choice but to hang on every actual or possible happening to Maisie and her family and friends. Grand book! You have to read it.

I always look forward to the next installment of the Maisie Dobbs series. The characters come to life and you are truly invested in each individual of the story. This volume does not disappoint. My only issue with this series is the fact that such a strong character as Maisie seems to make questionable choices in her love life. I was never much enamored of her first husband, James Compton, as he seemed rather weak in character. Nor am I delighted with this latest, a rather brash American. Whatever happened to the other men who seemed more suited to her? At any rate, this latest book continues the thread of Britain in war time and I fully expect new developments as America joins the war.