OPINION:
JOURNEY TO MUNICH: A MAISIE DOBBS NOVEL
By Jacqueline Winspear
Harper Collins, $26.99, 304 pages
Impersonating the daughter of a man imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camp of Dachau is risky work even for a woman as intrepid as Maisie Dobbs.
She is in mourning for her husband, an English peer killed in a flying accident when she is persuaded by the British secret service to take on a job that will put her deep within the dangers of Hitler’s Germany. Jacqueline Winspear has always cast the character of Maisie Dobbs in challenging situations involving crime and espionage in World War I, but this is her first venture into a truly perilous situation. Maisie lives up to her reputation for being cool-headed even when confronted with the Gestapo in this thriller set at the onset of World War II.
Her mission is to rescue Leon Donat, an engineer who is being held in Dachau and whom the German government has agreed to release only into the custody of a member of his family. The British are anxious to secure his release because of the potential wartime value of his military inventions, but the situation is complicated by events such as the German annexation of Austria which puts the English agent at increased danger of being captured. The concept of a woman who has to be disguised to look like Donat’s daughter fooling the Nazis is difficult to accept and the plot is not only fragile but rather flat.
As in her previous incarnations, Maisie is not especially vivacious and tends to be moralistic. It may be recalled that she had doubts about marrying because her husband was a member of the aristocracy and she was anything but. However, if anyone can take on the Nazis, it is probably Maisie who seems at time to have as little sense of humor as they do.
She sallies forth to Munch armed with little more than a wig that tends to get dislodged, a pistol and a remarkable degree of self-confidence. She deals coolly with German diplomats as well as the dreaded Gestapo, but after nerve-racking delays is taken to Donat only to find that he is, like herself, a fake. The man whom she meets is a prisoner who is indeed a victim of the Nazi terror, but she is quite certain he is not the English engineer and is tough enough to tell his captors that. The game Maisie is playing becomes more dangerous as she discovers where the real Donat is hidden and that he is indeed of great value to either side in the coming war. She finds him but has to persuade him that although she is not his daughter she is the only one who can save him from death at German hands.
To further complicate the situation, Maisie finds herself dealing with an industry tycoon whom she has always blamed for the death of her husband and who now wants her to help his wayward daughter escape from Germany. This is a subplot that adds little to the book and weakens the tension of Maisie’s situation. There are too many things that can and do go wrong, and her undaunted composure in coping with crises seems somewhat unlikely in the circumstances. Nobody ever said the Germans were stupid, even the Nazis, and their acceptance of this bold young woman is questionable. It would have seemed more likely that she would have wound up at least briefly in custody to have her identity questioned much more thoroughly. Maisie marches along and not even the swastikas surrounding her can intimidate her self-possession.
There are a few exciting scenes like an escape from Germany and Maisie’s remarkable dash for freedom, but this is not one of the more gripping Dobbs adventures despite its setting of danger and tension. The trouble is Maisie’s rather prim personality. She still tends to have the tone and vocabulary of a rather prissy school teacher and she makes a most unlikely spy. Ms. Winspear should endow her favorite character with a sense of the ridiculous. There isn’t much that Maisie doesn’t disapprove of and it makes her less interesting.
• Muriel Dobbin is a former White House and national political reporter for McClatchy newspapers and the Baltimore Sun.
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