Messenger of Truth – The Story
Messenger of Truth is the fourth book in the Maisie Dobbs series by Jaqueline Winspear. In it, we find Maisie investigating the death of artist Nicholas Bassington-Hope at the request of his sister, Georgina. Was he murdered or did he simply slip and fall as the police believe?
Messenger of Truth – My Thoughts
This book had a different feel than the previous Maisie Dobbs books. It felt a bit more solitary. I think it’s because in it, Maisie’s existence is more solitary. She no longer lives in her sponsor’s house. Instead she lives on her own in a newly purchased flat. She no longer runs to her mentor, Maurice, as they had a falling out in the previous book, Pardonable Lies. She also doesn’t have the constant presence of her assistant, Billy Beale. Unfortunately, Billy is sidelined with personal matters. His youngest is gravely ill.
Messenger of Truth – My Complaints
This leads me to my first complaint about this story.
The death of Billy’s daughter. It felt contrived and emotionless. Billy’s daughter dies of diptheria but he’s back at work rather quickly. And we’re left to believe that Maisie is broken up about this death too but she met the child, briefly once. It all felt, bland, just another bump in the road. Rather than crying at this death. I felt … angry. It was unnecessary to the story and made the main characters seem less multi-dimensional than they should be.
Besides the sense of solitutude and the obsurdity of Billy’s sub-plot, it rambled. The entire time spent with Georgina and her family felt, one dimensional. They seemed charicatures of themselves and ubelievable ones at that. I didn’t like them, though I’m sure I was meant not to, but I also didn’t hate them, basically they existed. And while I kept waiting for some crazy revelations about the family to emerge (e.g., incest, abuse), I was disappointed by the actual truth of them.
My last issue dealt with the resolution of the story. If I didn’t know the who, I knew the why from the moment Maisie heard the tidbit. The why, like the rest of the story, left me feeling a bit incredulous.
One part that did pique me, was the sub-plot dealing with the smuggling of art. Without giving too much away on that, I would have much prefered a more in depth story on that topic as it is one new to me and interesting.
Messenger of Truth – My Review
As the series goes, Messenger of Truth is my least favorite of the Maisie Dobbs series. It left me feeling unfullfilled and incredulous. I have a feeling reading it may be necessary to the next in the series. Certain things happen here, that my play forward. However, if that turns out to not be true, I’d probably recommend skipping it. I’d probably give this 1.5 starts on Goodreads, somewhere between I didn’t like it and it was okay.