Book review: An Incomplete Revenge by Jacqueline Winspear

The 35th book I read in 2017 is the fifth book in Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series, An Incomplete Revenge.  In it, the ever-war-haunted investigator looks into recurring acts of arson in a small town that was bombed by a Zeppelin during World War I.

Winspear still subscribes to what I term the Victoria's Secret Catalog school of writing, in which the clothing of main female characters is painstakingly described at a level of detail which completely pulls me out of the story and makes me want to skip to the end of the paragraph to see the price and where I can order each piece of the outfit.  And Maisie's constant interior monologue about her relative social standing vis-à-vis the other characters is still tedious, to the point that I finally realized which other literary character she reminds me of: Drizzt Do'Urden, with his obsessive introspection and hobby of amateur philosophizing between chapters.  Add to that a villain who could not be more obvious and two-dimensional if he literally twirled his moustache and a rather hard-to-swallow nod to Martin Guerre, in which  a broad-brimmed hat plays the role of Clark Kent's beleaguered glasses, and the prospect is unpromising.

I must admit, however, that this was my favorite of the Maisie Dobbs books to date.  Maisie is, actually, less self-involved than usual, in that the facts of the case don't allow her quite as long a leash to draw parallels to her own experiences.  And the absence of any attempts at romance with the departure of the other two corners of the ham-handed triangle set up in the first book is refreshing.

Winspear, in fact, appears to be attempting to jettison quite a bit of the baggage she saddled Maisie with in the beginning.  Apart from the explicit break with Dr. Dene and the complete failure even to mention the existence of the London policeman that was her other possible suitor, the author kills off Simon, the war-wounded first love that was an anchor around Maisie's neck, and seems to be setting up the departure from the series of Billy Beale, Maisie's assistant.  (As Billy is one of the few characters I actually like, I'm not sure how to feel about that one.)  Lady Rowan, Maisie's ex-patroness, doesn't even make an appearance, and her mentor, Maurice Blanche, is shown to be aging.  In addition, Winspear tamps down most of the annoying occultism of the earlier books, in which Maisie's insight is depicted as explicitly supernatural; in An Incomplete Revenge, Maisie's success is dependent mostly on good, old-fashioned shoe-leather and intelligence.

A few notes: the plot turns heavily on a band of Roma, to whom Winspear applies a more common term which I am assured is now considered an ethnic slur, and whose relationship to the protagonist is almost certainly an act of cultural appropriation.  Also, as I have become sensitive to the term since reading John Swinton's book, the brain-damaged Simon is repeatedly referred to as an "empty shell."