• A Dangerous Place

  • Maisie Dobbs Mysteries, Book 11
  • By: Jacqueline Winspear
  • Narrated by: Orlagh Cassidy
  • Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (2,121 ratings)

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A Dangerous Place  By  cover art

A Dangerous Place

By: Jacqueline Winspear
Narrated by: Orlagh Cassidy
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Publisher's summary

Four years after she set sail from England, leaving everything she most loved behind, Maisie Dobbs at last returns only to find herself in a dangerous place....

In Jacqueline Winspear's powerful story of political intrigue and personal tragedy, a brutal murder in the British garrison town of Gilbraltar leads Maisie into a web of lies, deceit, and peril.

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.

©2015 Jacqueline Winspear (P)2015 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic reviews

"[Narrator Orlagh] Cassidy makes the tension palpable as German planes bomb Guernica, while her insightful performance develops the thought-provoking ideas in Winspear's 11th Maisie Dobbs adventure. Series fans will be delighted." (AudioFile)

What listeners say about A Dangerous Place

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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Reboot or Finale?

Like so many reviewers, I have loved Maisie Dobbs! And it seems Jacqueline Winspear knew just how much we all wanted her to find happiness and James. But Ms. Winspear apparently has a more - at least to her - important view of Maisie as a seeker of Nirvana, that place of complete inner peace through ultimate detachment.

So we got what we wanted; then she swept it all aside and set Maisie back where she started. A good outcome? This listener is not so sure. An attempt to reboot the series? Or is this a finale? Whichever, this is certainly not a very satisfying chapter.

"A Dangerous Place" (really good title, by the way) is sad and slow with a mystery that goes nowhere and a Maisie wallowing in her sorrow while the people she should love (and who love her) wring their hands and wail and wonder what the heck she's up to. She's lost a lot of people she cared about, so it seems she's willfully setting out to lose more. I think our old Maisie would not have left her dear father and her friends in such pain. To say nothing of her readers!

The syrupy, oh so sweet and sleepy narration of Orlagh Cassidy just tops it all off as a real disappointment for those of us who have followed Maisie Dobbs faithfully and truly wanted to really like this book.

If you haven't read this series, please don't let this be your introduction to and lasting impression of Maisie Dobbs! The first 6-or-so books are really gems.

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34 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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Disappointing!

I waited so long for another Maisie Dobbs story and this one turned out to be so boring and convoluted. I couldn't wait for the ending. If you are a fan of the Maisie Dobbs stories, my advise is save your credit for another book by another author.

P.S. It pains me to write a negative review, I enjoyed most of the Jacqueline Winspear books so very much.

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OKAY

Perhaps I'm getting tired of this series, but it does seem to be getting too syrupy for me. Maisie is too perfect and too all-knowing. The "mystery" was not interesting, and the story is too much a romance of sorts.

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15 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Absolutely amazing!

I have read all of Ms. Winspear's titles, and I must say this was my very favorite by far! The narrator, Ms. Cassidy, made every word delightful to hear, and allowed the story to unfold with such grace and charm!! I SAVORED each sentence, not wishing to miss one single word of this tale. This novel possesses both drama and mystery, with an air of suspense that lingers throughout. I adore Historical Fiction and Jacqueline Winspear is one of the Top Authors in this category. You will NOT be DISSAPOINTED with this book, even if it is your first "Maisie Dobbs" novel. It is clever, intriguing, proper and supremely well written. The narration pushes it over the top as a FIRST CLASS AUDIOBOOK.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Back to the great Maisie books!

Fabulous return of Maisie Dobbs. I was disappointed in the previous book so I wasn't sure what a "new Maisie Dobbs series" would be like. From what I've seen in this book, the new series will be great.

Maisie can't just sit back and do nothing. Stopping in Gibralter on her way home to England she tries to come to terms with previous occurrences. She runs into a dead body, literally, and Maisie the detective is off on the trail.

Orlagh Cassidy does a fantastic job with the narration.

There were tears and interesting characters, including those from previous books, the Spanish Civil War, murders, and nurses. But Maisie is back and that's a good thing.

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    3 out of 5 stars
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I Miss Masie

I was becoming a little impatient with Masie in "Leaving Everything,.." Her level of self-absorption was growing by leaps and bounds and she was without real passion for anything. About the closest she seemed to be able to come was a rather tepid love for James Compton, her maternal-ish affection for Billy and her deep dependency on Maurice. which sparked the only thing she seemed truly excited about -- India. So off she goes. It only takes her an entire book to actually leave.

Cut to 1937 and "A Dangerous Place." In one fell swoop - a chapter - she has gone to India, come back, gone to Canada, married James, gotten pregnant, been widowed, lost the baby, left Canada, gone back to India and gets off the ship back to England in Gibraltar. Why? Because the entire country of England apparently will remind her of her loss.

Does it matter that her aging father and her dear friend Priscilla and others are worried about her? Nope. She's in pain so they can just go on worrying. She just abandons everyone to take long walks in Gibraltar and eat soup.

Then she finds a body and decides she just has to investigate. The murder and her investigation were so convoluted, complicated and coincidence-laden that I had difficulty keeping track.

I wanted to scream at the snails pace of this book and Orlaugh Cassidy's drawling, sloooow, overwrought narration of Maisie's character didn't help.

If you haven't read the earlier books in the series, don't start here.

I hope "Return to Munich" (due out in the Spring) snaps her out of this (enough already, Ms. Winspear!) and brings back some of the fire and sparkle of Maisie Dobbs.

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Retire Masie

I think that Ms. Winspear has come to the end of the Maisie Dobbs series with this book. She clearly cannot think of anywhere else to lead our favorite heroine. This book started with a sad ending of Maisie's happiness and dragged through an extremely boring case with boring characters that went nowhere. I think the ending was a good place to end the saga of Maisie. I was sad that this is how the story played out, but I think the author has lost her edge at this point. I really enjoyed all the books up to this point but this one was just slow moving and dragged on. Another thing that bothered me with the usually perfect Orlagh Cassidy's performance. She continually misprounounced the name Chana. Its her responsibility to know how to pronounce names, the C is silent - simple thing but took away from her usually A+

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Maisie at the crossroads

In prior books Maisie survived injuries in WWI that killed the physician she was in love with. After the Great War Maisie worked as a psychologist/investigator along with her assistant Billy as she investigated problems related to the post war era. She marries James and becomes pregnant at the beginning of this book then James is killed in an airplane accident and Maisie lost the baby.

In this book Maisie has spent the past four years in India. She received a cable from her step-mother asking Maisie to come home as her father is ill. Maisie heads for home but gets off the ship in Gibraltar as she is not ready to go home. The year is 1937 and the Spanish War is going on as well as the build up toward WWII. Maisie stumbles upon a dead man that has been murdered. She set off to find out why and who did the murder in-spite of the police and British Secret Service telling her to leave matters alone. Maisie’s mentor Dr. Maurice Blanche who left her his home and money when he died was an important man in the British intelligence agency. As I read this book I am wondering is Winspear changing the role of Maisie to one of espionage from that of a murder who done it as the time marches closer to WWII. I am not sure if I like the advancing of time in the story. I think I would prefer the time stay just post WWI and deal with all the issues the occurred during this time as Winspear did in the earlier books.

Winspear is an excellent writer and she has created a complex character in Maisie Dobbs. In this book the regular characters of prior books are not present and I miss them. I am not happy with the direction I think the story is heading but I cannot wait for book 12 to come out. One of my favorite narrators Orlagh Cassidy narrated the book.

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Transitional Book

Would you listen to A Dangerous Place again? Why?

Yes, I enjoyed it.

Any additional comments?

This book seemed like a transitional book to me. A transition into the time of WWII. A transition from a phase in her life that occurred since the last book. Most of the books were more subtle in Maise's evolution as a character. But like the first book in the series this covered a lot of back story, which I believe was necessary to move on to whatever the next books are going to be. As a result part of the book was about Maise finding her footing. I still enjoyed it.

Many mystery stories sidestep personal story by not allowing the character to evolve too much. They stay stuck in their issues. How can an investigator who is also a psychologist not evolve? Especially when the book is focused on her deep understanding of the people she is studying for a given case. Her life and personal healing lead her away from investigation. And now it has lead her back again. I am willing to trust the author and see what happens next.

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The old Maisie Dobbs is gone!

For those who have read only books 1 - 9 of the Maisie Dobbs series the bad news is that the light and fun Maisie is no more. She got married, lost her husband in a plane accident and lost their unborn baby all while in North America. In this novel, #111 in the series, she is headed home to England but changes her mind and leaves the ship in Gibraltar. She works at solvinng a murder and volunteers to serve as a nurse in the Spanish Civil War. The year is 1937 and Maisie must be 37 or 38 years old.

This is a very good mystery. Like all of the Maisie Dobbs novels it is narrated by the remarkable Orlagh Cassidy who again demonstrates she can exactly duplicate any accent. Ms. Cassidy narrating always improves the listening experience.

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