Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.92
EAN: 9781569473689
ISBN: 1569473684
Label: Soho Press
Manufacturer: Soho Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 360
Publication Date: 2004-06-01
Publisher: Soho Press
Studio: Soho Press

Praise for Maisie Dobbs:

"Maisie Dobbs is a quirky literary creation. If you cross-pollinated Vera Brittain's classic World War I memoir, Testament of Youth, with Dorothy Sayers's Harriet Vane mysteries and a dash of the old PBS series 'Upstairs, Downstairs,' you'd approximate the peculiar range of topics and tones within this novel. . . . Its intelligent eccentricity offers relief."-Maureen Corrigan, "Fresh Air" on NPR

"Deft. . . . Prepare to be astonished at the sensitivity and wisdom with which Maisie resolves her first professional assignment. . . . Winspear takes her through her ordeal with great compassion."-Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review

"Surprisingly fresh. . . . Winspear does a fine job with the 'Upstairs, Downstairs' aspects of the story, depicting the class tensions that inevitably arise as Dobbs climbs to a new station in life. Her progression from domestic staff to college student to wartime nurse to private investigator is both believable and compelling."-San Francisco Chronicle

Maisie Dobbs is back and this time she has been hired to find a wealthy grocery magnate's daughter who has fled from home. What seems a simple case at first becomes complicated when Maisie learns of the recent violent deaths of three of the heiress's old friends. Is there a connection between her mysterious disappearance and the murders? Who would kill such charming young women? As Maisie investigates, she discovers that the answers to all her questions lie in the unforgettable agony of The Great War.

Jacqueline Winspear was born and raised in England and later worked in publishing and as a marketing communications consultant in the U.K. before emigrating to the United States. She now lives in California and is a regular visitor to the United Kingdom. Birds of a Feather is her second novel featuring Maisie Dobbs.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Nice try
Comment: Maisie Dobbs is between boyfriends when she is hired to find a magnate's missing daughter. A decade after the end of the Great War, she will find that that terrifying experience still haunts the people she interviews, including her damaged assistant, soldier Billy. The story is feminine but glib, with many convenient coincidences, like the complete files young Maisie Dobbs has on people, a la Sherlock Holmes. Maybe her convenient friends and knowledge are better explained in the first book of this series, which I have not seen--but then we shouldn't begin with this second volume. Maisie shows surprisingly little effect on her language and learning of her start as a scullery maid. Maisie's investigation initially rests heavily on feminine intuition, aka acute observation, meditation, centering, and listening to the remnant energies in the places of death.

Maisie drops lots of names of fashion products of the day (1930. The considerable period details, fashions, and brand names seemed like an excessively prominent appliqué onto a modern feminist plot--until the solution to the mystery reveals that the motivation, and not just the situations, could have happened indeed only in the post WW I period. Maisie's feminist independence is somewhat undercut by her frequent recourse to male mentors, but perhaps that need was still true at the end of the Roaring Twenties. Author Winspear thrice interrupts utterly the flow of the novel, by intruding pauses where we are not to know the content of vital interviews Maisie has--because the author hasn't thought of a better way to prevent us knowing the murderer's identity. Maisie supplies a good twist when she does reveal the murderer, and finds the inklings of romance. She leaves us hanging also concerning essential details of the murders, such as how the murderer gained access to the victims.

I chose this book because of the period in which it is set. I read the original hardback version, whose cover has a deliciously apt historic photograph of three young women in gorgeous party outfits, dressed to fend off the English rains. Their smiles really captured my heart. Note: the proof reading of the text by Soho Press was not the best.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Check out the pages - Printing Error
Comment: Be very careful when you receive the book. Pages 139 through 202 are duplicated in the paperback form and then pages 203 through 266 are missing! So just when you think you are getting into the thick of things - you are missing a whole section. I am so frustrated.

I was thoroughly enjoying the storyline too.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Wonderful fun!
Comment: I actually bought this book for my aunt, because I knew she would enjoy the charming Maisie Dobbs and the wonderful writing of the author. I look forward to the next Maisie and I will read it as slowly as the others, to savor the rich descriptions and characters. The descriptions of city and countryside settings and of time periods, as each book moves forward in time, is a door to the past for me.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Superb fiction
Comment: Birds of a Feather is one of the Maise Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear. The lady has a remarkable ability to put across the period of World War I and its aftermath for a reader. Her understanding of people and their motives, of society's pressures and its effects on individuals comes across with each book I've read. Her depth in approaching her characters is far greater than most murder mysteries, and her sympathetic treatment of even her murderers is both novel and encouraging. Her writing is so readable, I often become so engaged with her characters and their lives that I forget to try to figure out "who dunnit," rare for me since I enjoy the puzzle. That is a good writer of fiction.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: You gotta love Maisie Dobbs
Comment: Jacqueline Winspear brings her delightful and refreshing female sleuth, Maisie Dobbs, back for a second adventure in Birds of a Feather. The title of this novel was curious because Maisie kept referring to coincidences not as a random happening but at "messengers of truth." This threw me off a little as I know that the fourth installment in this series is titled Messenger of Truth. Could Winspear have been doing a little foreshadowing? I guess I'll have to wait and see.

In Birds of a Feather, Maisie has been hired by Joseph Waite, a wealthy and influential businessman and philanthropist, to locate and bring home his daughter Charlotte. Never mind that Charlotte is a grown woman. Waite thinks, no, believes, that Charlotte should be where he can keep an eye on her. Not that Charlotte needs it; she is a natural-born leader like her father. Waite has his reasons that I won't mention so as not to spoil a good read.

As Maisie and her assistant Billy Beale begin their investigation, they soon stumble into the murder investigation of one of Charlotte's finishing-school friends. And it seems that the other two girls with whom Charlotte was close to before the Great War (WWI) have also turned up dead in recent weeks. Who could be killing them and why? What could four spoiled rich girls have done to warrant murder? Maisie and Billy are determined to find out, but the key question that remains is: Is Charlotte next?

A small piece of over-looked evidence at each of the three murder scenes leads Maisie and Billy on a quest to find out what is truly behind Charlotte's disappearance. Maisie has her hands full when she realizes that her beloved assistant is once again turning to drugs to ease the pain in his war-injured leg.

I enjoyed Birds of a Feather and I look forward to reading Maisie's next adventure. There were a tad too many details in the first half of this episode, but I think I learned more about life in England after WWI. What was chilling for me was to learn that the reason Charlotte's friends were killed, and Charlotte next on the list, is a historical fact and one that is left out of all the history books I've ever read.

Armchair Interviews says: Most interesting read with a lot of historical facts.

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