Cover image of "The Comfort of Ghosts," the final novel in a bestselling historical fiction series

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

World War I casts a shadow over Maisie Dobbs’s life throughout the three decades that elapse in Jacqueline Winspear’s bestselling historical fiction series. And the ghosts of that war haunt Maisie and many of those close to her even now, after the Second World War has finally staggered to an end. Maisie is now happily married and mothering an adopted refugee daughter. But the deaths of her fiancé in the Great War and of her first husband and unborn son a dozen years earlier return again and again as she conducts her last investigation. In this eighteenth and final entry in the series, The Comfort of Ghosts, Maisie emerges whole. She’s the product of scores of rewarding relationships with lovers, friends, her father, a beloved mentor, indulgent in-laws, challenging colleagues, and unforgettable others, all of whom come back to mind. It’s a perfect ending for the series.

Twin investigations, startling discoveries

In her practice as a “psychologist and investigator,” Maisie typically undertook missions thrust on her by walk-in clients or, more recently, the government. But now instead she stumbles into a situation that opens up two great mysteries. At the Belgravia mansion where she worked as a maid thirty years earlier, she finds four orphaned teenagers squatting. They’ve witnessed the murder of a prominent Nazi sympathizer—and now someone is on their trail, possibly with murderous intent. Maisie feels compelled to investigate. But the teenagers have also discovered a packet of old love letters that reveal Maisie’s first husband had fathered a child during World War I. And the urge to find his son is irresistible.

Maisie’s twin investigations lead her to startling discoveries. It develops that the teenagers had played a role in a secret government program that operated during the war throughout southeast England. They’d been trained in hand-to-hand combat as part of the “domestic resistance” organized to confront a Nazi invasion. And it was on a mission under orders that they’d witnessed the murder. But for Maisie the search for her late husband’s son yields an even more eye-opening discovery.

Naturally, Maisie will learn who killed that Nazi sympathizer, and why. And she’ll find the man her first husband had fathered so long ago. But what she learns along the way will bring her closer to understanding her country’s history—and herself.

The Comfort of Ghosts (Maisie Dobbs #18) by Jacqueline Winspear (2024) pages ★★★★☆

Photo of a village in Kent like the setting for much of the action in this bestselling historical fiction series
A canalside village in Kent, where much of this novel is set. Image: William Perugini – Tolman Homes

London, October 1945

Winspear paints an evocative picture of life in London in the wake of World War II. As a friend observes at length to Maisie, “We all know what’s going on, that housewives are still queueing in the streets for food rations, and even those have tightened up because supplies are being sent to liberated countries. Imports are either slow or stuck at the docks half the time because we don’t have the manpower to unload them, or the dockers are on strike because they can’t earn overtime by working on a Sunday.

“We’ve a generation of children who are behind at school, many of them leaving even earlier than fourteen so they can try to earn a living to help out the family. And look at the housing disaster. Thousands of homes with a big hole where a roof used to be, and that’s before you even look at the mounds of rubble on every street and the enormous number of homeless.”

Those words convey better than any statistics the impact of the war on Britain. At times, fiction trumps fact.

A final note

Jaqueline Winspear is a diligent researcher. And nearly every novel in this bestselling historical fiction series reveals some little-known or long-hidden facts about British history. The revelation in The Comfort of Ghosts about children trained to kill is a prime example. And yes, it’s true. Britain planned a no-holds-barred welcome for the Nazis. The Maisie Dobbs novels are a superb addition to the canon of historical fiction. They deserve to be read for years to come.

About the author

Photo of Jacqueline Wimspear, author of this bestselling historical fiction series
Jacqueline Winspear. Image: Soho Press

As she writes on her author website, “Jacqueline Winspear’s grandfather was severely wounded and shell-shocked at The Battle of the Somme in 1916, and it was as she understood the extent of his suffering that, even in childhood, [she] became deeply interested in the “war to end all wars” and its aftereffects. As an adult her interest deepened to the extent that, though she did not set out to write a “war” novel, it came as no surprise that this part of history formed the backdrop of Maisie Dobbs and other books in the series.” Now, in her valedictory effort, as she brings the series to a close, Maisie becomes involved in the even more challenging aftermath of the Second World War. 

Winspear was born in Kent, England, in 1955. She attended university, as she notes, at the “University of London’s Institute of Education, [then went to work] in academic publishing, in higher education and in marketing communications in the UK. She emigrated to the United States in 1990, and while working in business and as a personal/professional coach, [she] embarked upon a life-long dream to be a writer.” The first Maisie Dobbs novel followed years of writing for publication in magazines and newspapers. In addition to the eighteen Maisie Dobbs novels, she has written two standalone mysteries and a memoir. Winspear and her husband divide their time between California and the Pacific Northwest.

For a guide to all seventeen of the earlier novels in this series, see The Maisie Dobbs novels from Jacqueline Winspear.

I’ve also reviewed The White Lady by Jacqueline Winspear (A terrific standalone historical thriller).

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