TLC Book Tours Review: A Dangerous Place by Jacqueline Winspear

Title: A Dangerous Place
Author: Jacqueline Winspear
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Harper
Publish Date: March 17, 2015
Source: TLC Book Tours

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "Spring 1937. In the four years since she left England, Maisie Dobbs has experienced love, contentment, stability—and the deepest tragedy a woman can endure. Now, all she wants is the peace she believes she might find by returning to India. But her sojourn in the hills of Darjeeling is cut short when her stepmother summons her home to England; her aging father Frankie Dobbs is not getting any younger.

But on a ship bound for England, Maisie realizes she isn’t ready to return. Against the wishes of the captain who warns her, “You will be alone in a most dangerous place,” she disembarks in Gibraltar. Though she is on her own, Maisie is far from alone: the British garrison town is teeming with refugees fleeing a brutal civil war across the border in Spain.

Yet the danger is very real. Days after Maisie’s arrival, a photographer and member of Gibraltar’s Sephardic Jewish community, Sebastian Babayoff, is murdered, and Maisie becomes entangled in the case, drawing the attention of the British Secret Service. Under the suspicious eye of a British agent, Maisie is pulled deeper into political intrigue on “the Rock”—arguably Britain’s most important strategic territory—and renews an uneasy acquaintance in the process. At a crossroads between her past and her future, Maisie must choose a direction, knowing that England is, for her, an equally dangerous place, but in quite a different way."

My Two Cents:

In "A Dangerous Place," Maisie is still going through a difficult time. She spent some time in Darjeeling, India and decides to come back to England to face her new life. When she stops in Gibraltar, she realizes that she is not ready to go back yet and decides to stay in Gibraltar where new dangers await her.

This book remains darker like the previous book in the series and unlike the earlier books in the series. Maisie still does not seem like herself and I am wondering where she is going. In the earlier books in the series, she is so close to her friends and her family, especially her father. I found it interesting that she seems to have done a 180 and is very much involved in how she is feeling rather than the feelings of others. This book in a lot of ways felt like a means to an end but I could not exactly tell where that end was or is. I also felt like there were parts of Maisie's story that were missing. What exactly happened in Darjeeling? Did she heal at all? It certainly doesn't seem like it from this book

I did like the setting. The book series' years are starting to creep closer to World War II. Gibraltar is teeming with people trying to escape their situations in other parts of Europe. The pressure is beginning to build and Winspear makes you feel it. I really like traveling to an exotic locale with the characters in this book. Overall, I liked the mystery in this book but want to know more behind what is happening with Maisie.