Book review: *Pardonable Lies* by Jacqueline Winspear

• Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear
• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Picador (June 27, 2006)
• ISBN-13: 978-0312426217

Back-of-the-book blurb: In the third novel of this unique and masterly crime series, a deathbed plea from his wife leads Sir Cecil Lawton, KC, to seek the aid of Maisie Dobbs, psychologist and investigator. As Maisie soon learns, Agnes Lawton never accepted that her aviator son was killed in the Great War, a torment that led her not only to the edge of madness but also to the doors of those who practice the dark arts and commune with the spirit world. Determined to prove Ralph Lawton either dead or alive, Maisie is plunged into a case that tests her strength.

She Is Too Fond of Books’ review: Pardonable Lies is the third of the Maisie Dobbs mystery/crime novels by Jacqueline Winspear.  I’ve been reading these books along with others who’ve signed up for Book Club Girl’s “Mad for Maisie” readalong.

Pardonable Lies takes us more deeply into Maisie’s character and more deeply into the dark scars The Great War has left on her and the country.  The mystery/crime is darker than that encountered in Maisie Dobbs and Birds of a Feather, and comes close to breaking Maisie’s spirit and stability.

As in the other Maisie Dobbs books, Winspear brings the reader into the setting of 1930 post-war London.  Particular vocabulary (Billy, Maisie’s assistant, uses the terms “dog and bone” and “blower” to refer to the telephone; Maisie writes with a fountain pen), the smog of the city, the evidence of war injuries and economic depression are great attention to detail.

Maisie continues to struggle with coming to terms with the past – both with people (her deceased mother, and her beau Simon – who is permanently shell-shocked as a result of the war), and with the effects the war had on her.  She has put up a wall to protect herself from the damage of witnessing all that she did as a nurse at the casualty clearing station; she helped many, but also saw many perish.

Maisie becomes more introspective in Pardonable Lies; she assesses her own character, the way the reader has been observing.  Here she wonders whether or not she wants to pursue a romantic relationship:

… she could feel herself drawing back.  She watched the clouds drift by, large puffy cumulus clouds with deep blue sky in between.  Is that how she would be, driven in her work yet drifting in her most personal liaisons?  She had drifted into living at Ebury Place, drifted into everything except each new case, or so it seemed … Wasn’t it easier just to plunge ahead into work?  Not to have to worry about living accommodation, about the everyday minutiae of life?  Perhaps [he] would be better off alone or with someone else – someone less confused about the past, someone who had not loved before.

As with the previous books in the series, I appreciate the way Winspear tied the mystery into history; as clues are revealed, we learn more than cold hard facts (names and dates), we’re also shown personalities and nuances of situations that are plausible.  This novel addresses moral issues that are relevant today – both the core of one of the mysteries (sorry, I can’t tell you more without a spoiler!), and the title itself.  Pardonable Lies refers to those shades of gray in truth-telling, a “lie of omission vs. lie of commission” debate.

My one quibble with the novel is not the way the various threads of mystery were solved, but by how neatly they wrapped up.  There were many convenient coincidences that led Maisie to resolve seemingly disparate issues.  Still, very enjoyable, but I like to have the opportunity to pick up the clues and try to piece it together myself; in this case I felt that there was information only Maisie was privy to, until she clicked the pieces into place and shared the result with the reader.  It may be, however, that I missed some of the clues and inferences … back to sleuth school for me!