Maisie Dobbs #16 The Consequences of Fear | Jacqueline Winspear

_{‘Right son, this one’s going to the address in Leverstone Road – you go over Vauxhill Bridge and after a few lefts you’re almost there. Know where that is?’ The porter pointed to the handwritten address on the envelope as he handed it across the desk to the boy, who grasped it, ready to leave for his next destination.}

I recently realised that the next book in Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series was due to be published in June. The Comfort of Ghosts will be the eighteenth and final book in the series. It’s time for Winspear to bring Maisie’s story to an end and I’m glad she has resisted temptation to keep on churning a book out every year or so. But I suddenly realised I had two unread Maisie’s on my TBR that I wanted to read before June!

The timing is perfect.

In about five weeks we will be moving to our home in the mountains. After a couple of years of procrastinating and prevaricating, we have finally made the decision to up stakes and leave Sydney. In the end, it wasn’t a particularly hard decision, but we did want to wait until the timing felt right for both of us. That time is now.

Naturally there is a lot to sort out. Even though we have been decluttering and downsizing ever since B23 moved out of home a year ago, there are still quite a few last-minute things we couldn’t do without until closer to moving date, that now have to go. There’s also all the end of work stuff, saying farewell to friends and getting our mountains home ready for the invasion of the rest of our stuff!

With all this going on, I have been having trouble concentrating on books. Easy, comforting, unchallenging reads are what I need right now. So the sixteenth Maisie Dobbs book was exactly the right choice for this time.

The Consequences of Fear picks up the story not long after book fifteen, An American Agent (my Maisie summary page is here). Priscilla is recovering from her burn wounds, Maisie has adopted young Anna, and the American agent, Mark Scott, seems to have taken up permanent residence in Maisie’s heart.

As with all the Maisie Dobbs books, the murder mystery is only part of the story. This is a crime series where character development and growth is just as important to the author and her readers. We all want to know about the various relationships in Maisie’s life as well as Maisie’s inner world. The earlier books delved into the psychology & intuition aspect of Maisie’s life and work far more than these later ones do, which has taken the shine off the series a little bit, even though it also indicates that Maisie is finally letting go of her old ghosts. Either way, it is still like spending time with a dear old friend.

By the end of The Consequences of Fear, the bombing of Pearl Harbour has happened, bringing the US into the war. We are briefly told that one of Billy’s boys is serving in Singapore, alerting the reader to the possibility of much sadness and grief coming our way in the next book.

In her acknowledgements, Winspear lets us know that the character of Freddie Hackett, the young boy who runs messages between the Air Raid Precautions depots (and witnesses the murder at the centre of this story), was based on her father’s story of his childhood in WWII London. Her father then became an apprentice painter working for a company that had a government contract to paint special fire-retardant chemicals onto strategic government and military buildings in the English countryside – which was one of the storylines in book fourteen, To Die But Once.

In her author bio, Winspear explains that it was because her grandfather was “severely wounded and shell-shocked at The Battle of the Somme in 1916…that [she]…became deeply interested in the “war to end all wars” and its after effects.” But obviously her father’s experience of WWII had a huge impact too. The scars are both literal and figurative, an idea that Winspear employs throughout The Consequences of Fear.

_{Fear had to be handled with care, managed so it became a tool, not a weight.}

And finally, a bookish serendipity moment occurs thanks to one of the secondary characters, Elinor Jones.

Elinor was the young woman Priscilla took in to help her with her boys when they were young. She became part of the family and even after the boys had grown, still retained her rooms at the family home. Elinor was Welsh by birth and towards the end of the book we learn the phrase, roedd hi’n annwyl iawn – she was much loved. Her favourite hymn was Cwm Rhondda.

I found a version of it that was used in the John Ford’s 1941 film How Green Was My Valley. Known as the Bread of Heaven it was sung by the coal miners as they were heading home. So, a nice little piece at the end, to link in with Paula’s #Dewithon24.

ISBN: 9780749026684
Imprint: Allison & Busby
Published: 23rd September 2021 (originally published 23rd March 2021)
Format: Paperback
Pages: 381
Dates Read: 19th - 23rd March 2024 

This post was written on the traditional land of the Wangal clan, one of the 29 clans of the Eora Nation within the Sydney basin. This Reading Life recognises the continuous connection to Country, community and culture of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. They are the traditional custodians of the lands, seas, and skies on which we live and they are this nations first storytellers.