THE COMFORT OF GHOSTS by Jacqueline Winspear

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THE COMFORT OF GHOSTS
Jacqueline Winspear

Reviewed by Evie Harris
Posted August 4, 2024

THE COMFORT OF GHOSTS, by Jacqueline Winspear, is the eighteenth and final book in the famous and much-loved Maisie Dobbs series. The story opens in 1945 in Britain where the entire country is trying to come to grips with what is their now new normal. Squatting in abandoned homes is prevalent and when Maisie, a psychologist and investigator, is made aware that four adolescents are now living in an empty mansion in Belgravia she decides to investigate. What she finds are four secretive and ragged children and with them is a very ill soldier who has also sought shelter in the mansion. Maisie makes it her mission to help the young people, but she wants answers. What are they hiding and who are they afraid of?

THE COMFORT OF GHOSTS is a multi-layered and well-plotted tale. Readers will be reunited with characters from Maisie's previous endeavors. Ever persistent and speculative, Maisie digs deep to uncover the truth and it is during the search she is unexpectedly made aware of a long-kept secret having to do with her deceased first husband.

Beautifully told, THE COMFORT OF GHOSTS, is a story that brings forth the strengths and resilience people have within themselves when faced with going on after experiencing the unimaginable.

Profound, packed with emotion and memorable, THE COMFORT OF GHOSTS is well worth reading. Highly recommended.

SUMMARY

A milestone in historical mystery fiction as Maisie Dobbs takes her final bow!

The Comfort of Ghosts completes Jacqueline Winspear’s ground-breaking and internationally bestselling series.

Psychologist and investigator Maisie Dobbs unravels a profound mystery from her past in a war-torn nation grappling with its future.

London, 1945: Four adolescent orphans with a dark wartime history are squatting in a vacant Belgravia mansion—the owners having fled London under heavy Luftwaffe bombing. Psychologist and Investigator Maisie Dobbs visits the mansion on behalf of the owners and discovers that a demobilized soldier, gravely ill and reeling from his experiences overseas, has taken shelter with the group.

Maisie’s quest to bring comfort to the youngsters and the ailing soldier brings to light a decades-old mystery concerning Maisie’s first husband, James Compton, who was killed while piloting an experimental fighter aircraft. As Maisie unravels the threads of her dead husband’s life, she is forced to examine her own painful past and question beliefs she has always accepted as true.

The award-winning Maisie Dobbs series has garnered hundreds of thousands of followers, readers drawn to a woman who is of her time, yet familiar in ours—and who inspires with her resilience and capacity for endurance. This final assignment of her own choosing not only opens a new future for Maisie and her family, but serves as a fascinating portrayal of the challenges facing the people of Britain at the close of the Second World War.