"There's always room for Jello"

Books-Fiction:The Mapping of Love and Death by Jacqueline Winspear

I'm always happy when a new title in this series appears. The main character is Maisie Dobbs. Set in Britain between the two World Wars, it's about a woman psychologist who starts an investigation business in London. Having served as a nurse in war time France, she struggles in mind and soul to put the war behind her. She also struggles to find her place in a hard profession few women would undertake. Fortunately she has excellent help in both high and low places.

This is number seven in the series. It is 1932, fourteen years after the wars end. The remains of an American cartographer serving in the British army are unearthed in France. Maisie Dobbs is retained by his parents, to find the unnamed nurse whose love letters were found among his belongings.

Along the way we learn a little about the importance and extreme danger of map making during military conflict. We also get to see the beginnings of the film industry in England. The thing that always strikes me so forcefully in every book, is the wet, cold, terrible thing that is war.

Serious in tone, most of the characters are well developed. It is also a progressive series, where things happen in the lives of the characters. They work hard, struggle to make ends meet, experience love, get sick, and some of them die. Every book in the series stands on its own as it should. But I recommend starting with the first book in the series, Maisie Dobbs.

I delay picking this author's books up as long as possible. That's because I know I will suck it up in one go like a cherry jello shot. Then it's two longs years until the next one.