A Sunlit Weapon - Jacqueline Winspear

A Sunlit Weapon is the 17th entry in Jacqueline Winspear's long running and much loved Maisie Dobbs series. Picking up the latest in this series feels like settling in with an old friend to catch up.

I appreciate that Winspear keeps the narrative moving forward. We’ve been with  Maisie through her younger years through to the current time period - 1942 WWII. She's gone from a servant on an estate to now being a licensed psychologist and private investigator with her own office.

Winspear takes historical events and weaves them together with a mystery in each book. I really enjoy the historical bits. A Sunlit Weapon uses the air ferry women as a basis for one of Maisie's cases.

While the plotting and mysteries are always excellent, it is the characters that have me coming back for each new book. Maisie is a great lead - calm, thoughtful, somewhat impulsive and curious. Winspear has kept the personal lives of all the characters moving forward as well. I've become quite invested in their lives and what might be next for them all. Maisie's assistant Billy Beale is a perennial favorite supporting character. He and Maisie work well together. All of the characters have suffered some loss over the years - which mimics life. But, they continually put one foot in front of the other and move forward - can do, keep calm and soldier on. 

The latest case is a complicated one and as things progress, two of Macy’s cases seem to have something in common. I appreciate the way the cases are solved with leg work, conversations and slowly piecing together clues and observations. And with Maisie there's also that extra little bit intuition. 

The settings have always been a character in these books as well - each described so well that I can picture them. (I'd love to be in the car with Maisie, motoring down a country road.

Excellent plotting, wonderful characters and prose add up to another satisfying tale. But I knew it would be! If you love historical fiction and you haven't read Jacqueline Winspear you're missing out on an excellent series. See for yourself - read an excerpt  Sunlit Weapon.