Among the Mad by Jacqueline Winspear

I began reading the Maisie Dobbs series about 4 years ago. When I began, all I knew was that it was about a young woman detective in the 20's and 30's. With a name like Maisie, I had an impression before reading them, that it was going to be kind of a light, historical Nancy Drew-ish series.

Wow, was I in for a surprise. The Maisie Dobbs books are exquisite. They are mysteries, but they have many other layers that help them rise above that genre into the plain of simply great novels.

Maisie is not a fluffy blonde sleuth as I might have thought originally, but a brilliant psychologist and detective, a former nurse, and a woman who has suffered greatly in her life and risen above adversity in a way that is rare in her time period.

She is the daughter of "below stairs" types in England, a father who is a horse groom and a mother who was a maid. But the wealthy Lady that employed her parents saw a spark in the girl and sent her to a good school after Maisie's mother died. This lead Maisie to make friends in the upper echelons of society, as well as become more refined than her station might have allowed without the patronage of the wealthy friend.

After school, WWI broke out and Maisie served as a nurse in France. The horrors of war came too close at one point, nearly killing Maisie and her fiance, a doctor in the field hospital. Her fiance was left a shell of a man, unable to speak or take care of himself. He eventually passed away in a sanitarium in one of the volumes of the series.

So Maisie, trained by a Sherlock Holmes-like figure, a psychological detective Maurice Blanche. She worked as his apprentice and then began her own business when he retired.

Now that I've given a long background on this character, I am now brought to this newest installment in the series, Among the Mad. Maisie is called in on an important case, a man has threatened the government of England if money and assistance is not given to the WWI vets who are injured in mind and body and cannot find work. Working with Scotland Yard, Maisie follows all manner of leads to track down the madman who wants to unleash nerve gas on London if his demands are not met.

In addition to the general mystery story of finding the bad guy before it is too late, this book explores several interesting aspects of the era in London. Taking place in 1932 and into the New Year holiday of 1933, the Depression and issue of war vets with 'shell shock' are deeply examined. Maisie's psychology and nursing backgrounds lead her to several mental hospitals where former colleagues give her information about the mental injuries suffered by the WWI vets and how the horrors of the war affected them and continue to cause them problems over a decade later.

WWI is often the less written about war, because WWII had a much larger scope, a longer US involvement, and more tragic stories to tell. But WWI caused WWII and the war time trench conditions were very terrifying and horrid for the men who fought there for four long years. In the US, our men were only there about one year, and so we didn't have as many vets, or as many shell shocked victims as in England. The issues of WWI vets are a prevalent theme in the Dobbs series and I find it fascinating that it doesn't really matter what war it is, the horror of it is overall the same no matter what time period, or country of origin for the soldier.

There is also a plot thread in this book about Billy Beale, Maisie's loyal assistant. In a previous book, Billy's toddler daughter died of a childhood disease and in this book, Billy's wife, Doreen, still cannot cope with her grief. She finally becomes a danger to herself and must be put in an asylum. The first place she is sent is the stuff of horror stories, with medieval "treatments" that do more harm than good. Maisie is able to help Doreen get into a more modern facility, where talk therapy and more conventional methods are employed. But this plot adds a richness to the historical setting, showing how the 1930s were very much a time of transition in the field of mental health.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book as I always enjoy a Dobbs story, and I look forward to the next installment, hopefully soon!

Assault and Pepper by Tamar Myers

I've been reading Tamar Myers' Magdelena Yoder mysteries for about two years now (or is it 3?) and this one blew me away, mystery wise. I always enjoy these books, they're short, very witty, and Mags is a hilarious character to read about. She owns a lucrative inn in the PA town of Hernia, where the population tends to be either Amish, like Mags' ancestors or Mennonite, like Mags herself.

In this book, I would say that Myers really shook up the town of Hernia in a really big way. Normally the murder mysteries that occur are related to inn guests or other outsiders, so that the town characters themselves remain fairly unchanged. But in this book, Myers drastically changed the lives of four of the "regulars" in her books.

The mystery revolves around the murder of Mags' minister, Rev. Shrock. Magdelena always liked her Rev., although his wife Lodema was her nemesis. In this book, the Rev. is dead, Lodema goes off her rocker and is institutionalized, and the killer revealed was a huge surprise.

Unfortunately, my desire not to give the book away will lead to the fact that this review is suddenly cut a little short, since talking much about it will no doubt give it away to someone who likes Myers and hasn't read this one in the series yet.

Suffice it to say, I found the ending a big surprise, something that doesn't happen much in low key mystery series like this one. I don't always figure them out, but it usually isn't quite so shocking as this particular book. But yay for Tamar Myers! As I've said before, I like the series that go forward in time the best, and the deaths and arrests in this book will give some fresh blood and new plot lines to the series that should really shake things up and make it more interesting to read future volumes!

Julie and Julia by Julie Powell

Well.... I haven't written about this book yet even though I finished it a week ago, because I am not sure how I feel about it.

First let me say that I read the book AFTER I saw the movie. Very good thing. I adored the movie. It was 2 hours of bliss. I am glad I saw the movie first because I think I liked the book better than I would have had I not an image of Julie Powell via Nora Ephron's movie.

But this is a book blog, not a movie blog, so I'm just gonna get to the book. I love the idea. Julie Powell's cooking project is very interesting and fun to read about. But the rest of Julie? Not so much. She's kind of a big whiner. I think it is because she wanted to be an actress and ended up a secretary. She clearly believed herself better than her job. I understand that most people don't aspire to secretary-hood in their lives, but I just wonder why Julie thought she was SO awesome that she was having a life crises over the fact that she didn't like her job. She had her health, a nice husband who put up with her, income enough to buy all the stuff needed to make all Julia Childs' French food, friends, and family.

I know it is probably not fair to criticize a blogger/autobiographer for making something all about them, but somehow, Julie Powell did it in a very obnoxious way. I have read TONS of books by people writing about themselves, and Julie Powell did not succeed in the way others have. The best comic "blogger" style writing is self-deprecating. Take the late, Great Erma Bombeck. A really smart, clever woman, but she was always the butt of her own jokes in her books in a way that made you want to be her daughter, sister, next door neighbor, etc. Julie admits faults but at the same time seems to either not believe them or feel she's justified in them. I was pretty put off by her.

I know I may have readers of all political stripes here on this blog, so I am not in the business of making politics part of the discourse but I have to say one thing--Julie Powell, a self-avowed Democrat working for a government agency during the Bush administration, was very hateful and nasty toward Republicans. She made snide comments about the GOP as though it is common knowledge they have no style of dress, enjoy being mean or cruel, generally making them her personal punching bag on numerous occasions in the book. It's obviously a-OK for Powell to love her political views and think she's right, but I don't understand why a political ideal or view makes a person automatically horrible and unworthy of respect. I would be just as annoyed if she had been a Republican dissing Dems, it was a glaring example of Julie Powell's inherent unpleasantness. She even had an aunt in the book that she admitted to loving very much but STILL harped on the fact that aunt was a Republican as though that was like admitting that the aunt was also a criminal or something. Totally uncalled for and obnoxious. I guess given Powell's attitude, I should just assume she wouldn't want the likes of me reading her books, and therefore if I'm offended it's my own fault?

Whatever. Point is, I didn't like the book very much even though I was very excited to read it. The cooking passages were entertaining whenever she wasn't whining about something while writing about cooking.

I do, however, have Julia Child's memoir, My Life in France, on hold at the library and I dearly hope that it is NOT a disappointment.

Father's Day Murder by Leslie Meier

The Leslie Meier Lucy Stone mystery series is one of my all time favorite. Each title is holiday related, and this book obviously takes place around Father's Day.

Lucy Stone is a married mother of 4 in Tinker's Cove, Maine where she writes for the local newspaper. In this installment, Lucy's paper wins an award and she and her boss, Ted, win an all-expense paid trip to a week long convention in Boston. So Lucy packs off to go, leaving her kids and husband home to fend for themselves.

While at the conference, a man is murdered. The victim is the patriarch of a wealthy family that runs a newspaper syndicate. Lucy knows some of the family members because they vacation in Tinker's Cove, and her natural curiosity leads her to start researching the family and trying to solve the case.

The main reason I love Lucy Stone books is the mixture of the everyday middle class family interactions and the small town atmosphere with the mysteries on the side. This book was not quite as fun because she wasn't home during the majority of the story. But I did enjoy the descriptions of Lucy shopping at Filene's basement and visiting the Isabelle Stewart Gardiner museum while in Boston. I figured out the killer pretty easily, but I didn't mind, it was still a fun read.