It was challenging to see Maisie in such pain, when I didn't really share those experiences with her. I anticipated a time jump and new secondary characters (and even posed the question if she would come back married and with a baby, but I did not think that would actually happen.) As a fresh start for the series, I enjoyed A Dangerous Place, but I question Winspear's choices of timing. I'm quite critical of this novel in many ways because I am so invested in the series and Maisie as a character. How fortuitous for Maisie to stumble across any body, but that she did with this particular dead body, which is so connected to so many aspects of the Spanish Civil War in Gibraltar, stretched the boundaries of coincidence. The mystery at the center of this novel was intriguing, but it felt too convenient. I love Maisie, and even as I felt this book was emotionally overwrought because of its timing, it was fascinating to explore Gibraltar with Maisie.
Once I picked the book up again, I enjoyed the experience. To also have James die and to come back with a very sad Maisie didn't quite ring true. To have their wedding and married life occur off the page seemed hollow. I have spent years (and many books) rooting for Maisie and James. As a reader, I struggled with Winspear's choices here. And then she lost her baby at eight months of gestation. As I read them, I was so shocked I had to set the book aside for a few days. After setting the stage in Gibraltar in the opening pages (Maisie stumbles upon a dead body), Winspear recounts the last four years of Maisie's life in the form of postcards, letters, and telegrams. These postcards appear in the book itself, along with many others. My thoughts: Sunday I wrote about the Maisie Mail I received. Note: this review contains spoilers about what happened in those four years of Maisie's life between books, all of which are revealed in this novel's first thirty pages. She gets off her England-bound ship in Gibraltar because she's not quite ready to return. The basics: Set four years after the last Maisie Dobbs novel, Leaving Everything Most Loved, in A Dangerous Place, we meet up with Maisie in Gibraltar in 1927 during the Spanish Civil War. My reviews of the other eleven (plus Winspear's stand alone historical novel) are in my Book Review Database. The backstory: A Dangerous Place is the eleventh historical mystery featuring Maisie Dobbs.
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