“An Incomplete Revenge” - Jacqueline Winspear

 

(Maisie Dobbs book 5)

🔥 Great War-related trauma lingers and a quaint, English village is finally confronted by its past. I enjoyed the motivation angle for this mystery tremendously. Winspear creates a scenario where an intense motivation for revenge leads to the question of whether atonement for certain crimes is really possible.

🔥Winspear takes a hard look at anti-immigrant sentiment during the war years (particularly against those of German extraction), as well as the treatment of Roma communities. Both groups faced discrimination and were othered in their own homes.

🔥 AIR was quick-paced. Events and Maisie’s discoveries emerge at a satisfying pace. Only the Priscilla plot point felt tangential IMO. She is self-absorbed, entitled, and honestly hard to like.

🔥 Winspear also includes in the mix, the rise of frustrations connected to a postwar global economic depression. We get a sense of festering resentments among the lower classes hit hardest by economic woes - the dark underside of the heady 20s. Winspear illustrates how the stage was being set for a second global conflagration as fascism preyed upon the poor, and themes of nativism grew unchecked.