Messenger of Truth by Jacqueline Winspear

This is the 4th in the Maisie Dobbs mystery series. Maisie is an private investigator and psychologist in 1930's London. She is approached by Georginia Bassignton-Hope to investigate the death of her brother. The police have ruled it an accident but she feels in her heart that it was murder. Her brother was an artist who was becoming pretty famous. He died the night before his gallery showing. He was at the gallery getting ready to hang his most talked about painting. Nobody, except himself, knows what it was about or where to find it.

Maisie takes on this case and soon finds herself immersed in case where the family is a bit eccentric and the more she questions different people who had contact with the artist, the more she has to re-question others because they didn't give her the truth.

Throw into the story a little about Maisie herself and her helper, Billie. Unfortunately Billie's family has a hard time when the children get sick. Within this story is woven a bit about what London was like after the first world war as well, I thought that part was interesting.

As most of you know..I prefer to start a series from the beginning but sometimes that just doesn't work out. This book was a bit slow for me at first, I think because I don't read a lot of books that take part in that time frame, so it was harder for me to get used to it, plus I knew it wasn't the first in the series so of course kept wondering what I was missing. haha! Towards the end of the story though I was definitely interested and wondering exactly what had happened to the artist and what his final piece was about (thank goodness we do find out! haha!). I like Maisie and Billy and plan to add the first in the series to my incredibly long wish list. haha!

new author/mystery/319pgs