Elegy For Eddie by Jacqueline Winspear
October 30th, 2012 from Harper Perennial
With ELEGY FOR EDDIE (Harper Perennial; October 30, 2012; Trade Paperback; $15.99), New York Times bestselling author Jacqueline
Winspear once again takes readers on a journey to England during the rapidly
changing period between the World Wars – a period currently in the spotlight,
given the recent success of the Downton
Abbey TV series. In Winspear’s
eagerly awaited new novel, the trailblazing female private investigator Maisie
Dobbs solves a crime that crosses shifting class boundaries.
After undertaking intelligence work
for the Crown in A Lesson of Secrets,
Maisie here focuses her attentions on a case that hits closer to home. Indeed,
it is a crime that will take her back to her roots on the hardscrabble streets
of Lambeth. Maisie is surprised when she arrives at her office one day to be
greeted by a legation from her past. Scrubbed and dressed in their Sunday best,
a group of costermongers who once sold fruit and vegetables from pushcarts
alongside her father has come to solicit her aid. Eddie Pettit, a man who had
at one time or another “calmed” each man’s horse, has died in a suspicious
manner during an alleged accident at the paper factory where he ran errands.
These men—who have long felt protective of Eddie—do not believe the official ruling
of death by misadventure, and because Maisie admires these men as the giants of
her childhood, she cannot dismiss their concerns.
Eddie seemingly had no enemies—or
did he? As Maisie begins her investigation, she discovers some inexplicable
connections: Eddie was often seen writing in a notebook that he said was given
to him by an unidentified man named Bart—a notebook that has now disappeared.
Eddie seems to have supplemented his passion for horses with an unlikely new interest
in flying machines. And the paper factory where he died has recently taken on a
new employee, Jimmy Merton, who had bullied Eddie when they were boys together
at school. Also raising Maisie’s suspicions is the fact that the factory is
owned by John Otterburn, the fabulously wealthy and notoriously anti-union
newspaper baron.
As Maisie travels back to her
origins and circles closer to the truth at the center of Eddie’s death, she
also struggles in her private life to balance her past with the life she now
lives. Her romance with James Compton, scion of the family for whom she once
worked, breaks well-established class boundaries and, despite her love for him,
leaves Maisie feeling suffocated. Meanwhile, her employees—her trusted
lieutenant Billy Beale, a family man, and part-time secretary Sandra, a
tragically widowed young woman, are trying to make their own ways in a changing
world rife with financial insecurities.
As she does in all the books in the
series, Jacqueline Winspear evokes the London of that bygone era with unrivaled
skill. Her always psychologically astute characterizations and indelible sense
of place enrich her considerable talents as a storyteller. ELEGY FOR EDDIE finds both Winspear and Maisie Dobbs at the top of
their respective games.
About the Author
Jacqueline Winspear is the author
of the New York Times bestsellers A Lesson in Secrets, The Mapping of Love
and Death, Among the Mad, An Incomplete Revenge and four other
national bestselling Maisie Dobbs novels. She has won numerous awards for her
work, including the Agatha, Alex, and Macavity awards for the first book in the
series, Maisie Dobbs, which was also
nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel—only the second time a first novel
was nominated in this category. Like her characters, she has a personal
connection to the Great War and its aftermath: Her grandfather was severely
wounded and shell-shocked at The Battle of the Somme in 1916, and his traumatic
experiences kindled a lifelong interest in the subject. Originally from the
United Kingdom, Winspear now lives in California.
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