Maisie Dobbs

So, you know I love a British mystery. I can't remember where I heard about Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs, but I think it was described as something like Downton Abbey with a detective which was enough to make me purchase the kindle book that moment.  Also Kindle has this thing where they sell you the audio book for a few dollars more.  So, I ended up listening to it.  

At first, it was great - what could be better than a British accent reading me to sleep every night?  But, it turns out I was falling asleep immediately, and not just because I'm bone tired from a long day making the proverbial donuts but because Maisie Dobbs is boring as hell.  

It is a lot like Downton Abbey in that Maisie starts out "downstairs" until her benevolent overlords recognize that she's really smart and pay for her to be taught by a tutor in addition to doing all her regular work.

Anyway, she gratefully takes the education, is pretty successful, for some reason joins the nursing squad for WWI on a whim and falls in love with this doctor.  Thus begins a long and chaste flashback to the war years and a lot of goopy, sentimental talk about "our boys" and sacrifices etc.  In the flashforward, you see that Maisie is alone, so obviously perfect doctor boyfriend died.

So, the mystery Maisie is trying to solve in the present has to do with this retreat that some guy has set up for wounded and disfigured soldiers, even though the war's been over for 10 years.  Maisie is very sympathetic to these people and the author goes to great pains to show what a sensitive soul she is to the veterans by never staring at their scars and recoiling in horror and whatnot.  Then she pulls back her hair and shows a friend that she's got a crazy awful scar on her head too, only her hair covers it up.  THEN! What happens but in the last few pages, she goes to a country hospital where perfect boyfriend's been all along?

And some shit about "tissue paper armour" that protected the memory of the past.  That's bullshit!  True Love doesn't care if you're in a wheelchair, speechless, with drool running down disfigured face! My God, at least go visit him once or twice in 10 years, Maisie!