IN HER FIFTH OUTING, MAISIE DOBBS, THE EXTRAORDINARY PSYCHOLOGIST AND INVESTIGATOR, DELVES INTO A STRANGE SERIES OF CRIMES IN A SMALL RURAL COMMUNITY.
With the country in the grip of economic malaise, and worried about her business, Maisie Dobbs is relieved to accept an apparently straightforward assignment from an old friend to investigate certain matters concerning a potential land purchase. Her inquiries take her to a picturesque village in Kent during the hop-picking season, but beneath its pastoral surface she finds evidence that something is amiss. Mysterious fires erupt in the village with alarming regularity, and a series of petty crimes suggests a darker criminal element at work. As Maisie discovers, the villagers are bitterly prejudiced against outsiders who flock to Kent at harvesttime—even more troubling, they seem possessed by the legacy of a wartime Zeppelin raid. Maisie grows increasingly suspicious of a peculiar secrecy that shrouds the village, and ultimately she must draw on all her finely honed skills of detection to solve one of her most intriguing cases.
Rich with Jacqueline Winspear’s trade-mark period detail, this latest installment of the bestselling series is gripping, atmospheric, and utterly enthralling.
Also by Jacqueline Winspear
AN INCOMPLETE REVENGE
AN INCOMPLETE REVENGE
JACQUELINE WINSPEAR
Henry Holt and Company, LLC
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Copyright © 2008 by Jacqueline Winspear
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Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Winspear, Jacqueline, 1955-
An incomplete revenge : a Maisie Dobbs novel / Jacqueline Winspear.—1st ed. p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-8215-9
ISBN-10: 0-8050-8215-8
1. Dobbs, Maisie (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Women private investigators—England—London—Fiction. 3. Great Britain—History—George V, 1910-1936—Fiction. 4. Kent (England)—Fiction. 5. City and town life—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6123.1575153 2008
823’92—dc22 2007040639
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First Edition 2008
Designed by Victoria Hartman
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedicated to my parents,
Albert and Joyce Winspear
With All My Love
“Of all the gifts that people can give to one another,
the most meaningful and long lasting are
strong but simple love and the gift of story.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.,
If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.
—Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)
There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.
—Josh Billings,
AN INCOMPLETE REVENGE
PROLOGUE
The old woman rested on the steps of her home, a caravan set apart from those of the rest of her family, her tribe. She pulled a clay pipe from her pocket, inspected the dregs of tobacco in the small barrel, shrugged, and struck a match against the rim of a water butt tied to the side of her traveling home. She lit the pipe with ease, clamping her ridged lips around the end of the long stem to draw vigor from the almost-spent contents. A lurcher lay at the foot of the steps, seeming at first to be asleep, though the old woman knew that one ear was cocked to the wind, one eye open and watching her every move.
Aunt Beulah Webb—that was the name she was known by, for an older gypsy woman was always known as
