The war will put Priscilla herself in peril, too. The oldest of her three sons was seriously injured at Dunkirk, and the second has joined the RAF. Motherhood has taken a frightening turn for Priscilla. Maisie has grown to love the little girl, and her efforts to adopt Anna run through the book. On the home front, at her manor house in Chelstone, Maisie's father and stepmother are caring for a young evacuee named Anna, whom Maisie took in as part of Operation Pied Piper, which evacuated about 3 million people, most of them children, out of London in four days in 1939 as Hitler's armies advanced across Europe. She still doesn't trust him - or her own feelings about him. Department of Justice agent who helped Maisie out of a serious jam in Munich in 1938 a few books back. He turns out to be Mark Scott, the charming but enigmatic U.S. Embassy wants her to work with the person of the book's title. Maisie has another delicate angle to deal with as she tries to find Catherine's killer. This time, instead of treating soldiers at the front, they're rescuing civilians from fires and collapsed homes, maneuvering through rubble-strewn London as the bombs fall around them. The American Agent opens with Maisie and her best friend, the wealthy and flamboyant Priscilla Partridge, returning to the same duty they performed in the last war: driving an ambulance. She researches each novel so carefully that the series could almost serve as a history of the United Kingdom in the first half of the 20th century. Winspear, who is British but has lived in the United States for almost 30 years, has said that the idea for the books grew out of hearing stories of her grandfather's experiences in World War I. Based on fan contributions to a Facebook group, it's a collection of quotes called What Would Maisie Do? Inspiration From the Pages of Maisie Dobbs.
Maisie's gentle, thoughtful nature is such a hallmark, though, that another book is being published in tandem with The American Agent.
Reading a Maisie Dobbs book is a little like spending time with an old friend you don't see often enough, if your old friend's gig is tracking down and capturing criminals. Through it all she has solved sometimes harrowing cases with a mixture of intelligence, intuition, determination and compassion that makes her - and it's an odd compliment, I know - one of the most soothing characters in crime fiction.
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