All copies of this title, including those transferred to portable devices and other media, must be deleted/destroyed at the end of the lending period.
Description
With the country in the grip of economic malaise, and worried about her business, Maisie Dobbs is relieved to accept an apparently straightforward assignment from an old friend to investigate a potential land purchase. Her inquiries take her to a picturesque village in Kent during the hop-picking season, but beneath its pastoral surface she finds evidence that something is amiss. Mysterious fires erupt in the village with alarming regularity, and a series of petty crimes suggests a darker criminal element at work. As Maisie discovers, the villagers are bitterly prejudiced against outsiders who flock to Kent at harvest-time--even more troubling, they seem possessed by the legacy of a war-time Zeppelin raid. Maisie grows increasingly suspicious of a peculiar secrecy that shrouds the village, and ultimately she must draw on all her finely honed skills of detection to solve one of her most intriguing cases.
Jacqueline Winspear adds a fascinating episode to the Maisie Dobbs series, which justly gains fans with each new story. Orlagh Cassidy began the audio series with PARDONABLE LIES and continues her appealing portraits of the characters. She smoothly, and quite elegantly, delivers a variety of accents of the Kent countryside gentry and townsfolk, as well as the Londoners of different classes. The festive spirit of the "hop-picking season" covers some dark secrets in a rural village, as the legacy of loss in WW I haunts many who survived those years. Cassidy nicely conveys Maisie's honest wisdom, sensible approach to her "inquiries," and spirited manners. The details of village life, a community of Gypsies, and the shifts in attitudes of the late 1920s make a vivid audio mystery. R.F.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
About the Author
Jacqueline Winspear is the author of four previous Maisie Dobbs novels, Maisie Dobbs, Birds of A Feather, Pardonable Lies, and Messenger of Truth. Originally from the United Kingdom, Winspear now lives in California.
