"A female investigator every bit as brainy and battle-hardened as
Lisbeth Salander." -- Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air, on Maisie
Dobbs
The thirteenth installment in Jacqueline Winspear's enormously popular
New York Times bestselling mystery series. As Britain declares war on
Germany, the indomitable Maisie Dobbs stumbles on the deaths of refugees
who may have been more than ordinary people seeking sanctuary on English
soil.
Sunday September 3rd 1939. At the moment Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain broadcasts to the nation Britain's declaration of war with
Germany, a senior Secret Service agent breaks into Maisie Dobbs' flat to
await her return. Dr. Francesca Thomas has an urgent assignment for
Maisie: to find the killer of a man who escaped occupied Belgium as a
boy, some twenty-three years earlier during the Great War.
In a London shadowed by barrage balloons, bomb shelters and the threat
of invasion, within days another former Belgian refugee is found
murdered. And as Maisie delves deeper into the killings of the
dispossessed from the "last war," a new kind of refugee -- an evacuee
from London -- appears in Maisie's life. The little girl billeted at
Maisie's home in Kent does not, or cannot, speak, and the authorities do
not know who the child belongs to or who might have put her on the
"Operation Pied Piper" evacuee train. They know only that her name is
Anna.
As Maisie's search for the killer escalates, the country braces for what
is to come. Britain is approaching its gravest hour -- and Maisie could
be nearing a crossroads of her own.
