Maisie Dobbs is back on the case

Now and then, we could all use a change of scenery.

Certainly that holds true for psychologist-turned-sleuth Maisie Dobbs, the damaged and yet indomitable heroine of Jacqueline Winspear's mystery series set in Britain in the years between the two World Wars. Or at least that's where they were mostly set until A Dangerous Place (***1/2 out of four), which finds Maisie in Gibraltar — recovering, or perhaps hiding, from a personal tragedy that has left her cut off from all she knew and loved in England.

Winspear, however, is clearly interested in more than just a shift in scene. In this her 10th Maisie Dobbs novel, Winspear uses Maisie's shattered heart and eventual spiritual rebirth to reinvigorate her heroine while clearing away a number of plot strands that had threatened to fray.

Like the world in which she lives, Maisie is on the brink of change. Up to now, this often sublime series had focused on the impact the First World War had on Maisie, who served as a nurse, and on the economy and society of Britain at large. But in this novel, which thrusts Maisie into the Spanish Civil War, you can feel the ground move beneath her, as history begins to make its subtle turn from post-World War I to pre-World War II.

It's 1937 and Maisie has made an unplanned stop in Gibraltar — a British stronghold flooded by Spanish refugees and stalked by spies for the various governments who are using this war as a try-out for the one to come. Walking one night, Maisie comes upon the body of a local Jewish photographer, and despite pressure from the local police and the British secret service, she cannot leave the case alone.

Why? She doesn't have a client. But for Maisie, the case becomes "a line thrown across the turbulent waters...a line she would use to pull herself through the pain of terrible loss, onto land."

It's the Maisie we know, bringing her considerable intelligence and ingenuity to bear on a mystery, determined to find justice for the victim and his family. But it's also, in a sense, a throwback to the Maisie we first knew: working on her own by day, tortured by memories at night.

But Winspear is not interested in just retreading old ground. With each new book, Maisie has been forced to take a closer look at her motives and her actions. With A Dangerous Place, she must also confront the actions of her own government — and the frightening possibility that the murderer is beyond justice and the victim is just one of many to come.

With clarity and economy, Winspear lays the historical groundwork for her story without bogging us down in details of an incredibly complex conflict. The setting matters, but what may matter more is the lovely, sometimes poetic way Winspear pushes her heroine forward, rewarding those who have read the entire series without excluding those who haven't.

May she shine on the literary scene for many books to come.

A Dangerous Place

Jacqueline Winspear

Harper, 309 pp.

*** ½ out of four