Jacqueline Winspear has written a number of books about her heroine Maisie Dobbs who features in crime stories and thrillers set between the wars (see my review of one here). The White Lady is also an historical novel but it is a stand-alone story. I picked it up in a bookshop which had opened in a suburb of Sheffield. I wanted to buy something to support them but they mainly had children’s books so I picked this one up new in paperback just after it had been published. It is a couple of years ago since I bought it so this challenge has been useful as it may have been overlooked for more years without this impetus to read it.
The story is set in rural Kent in 1947 where Elinor is a single woman, living alone. She becomes involved in the affairs of some neighbours who are being threatened by an organised crime family from the East End. Elinor has had a life connected with the secret services and she has contacts and skills she can use on behalf of her new friends but she also has scars from the secret work she undertook during the war.
This story is told with a number of flashbacks starting with Elinor as a child during WW1 living in Belgium and becoming involved, with her family, in resistance to German occupation. As the 1947 story is told the flashbacks move on through time until the two strands connect. It’s cleverly done, if a little contrived, and works well.
The author shows us, through her characters, how women became involved in the secret world and some of what they did. She doesn’t make Elinor out to be an unrealistically heroic figure but a woman with language skills who wanted to play her part. The story also demonstrates the cost that that involvement could have. The situation in the 1940s with corruption in the police and the control that some gangs had of criminal activity is also shown. It appears to be well researched.
This isn’t a long book so there aren’t a lot of sub-plots and the story is very straightforward. I think that this made the book very readable and I enjoyed it a lot. I also enjoyed the fact that the main character was an older woman who had an interesting past – so often, the main characters in books are very young and inexperienced. The book also demonstrated the cost to people of living a secret life and the scars that events in the past can leave.
I’m going to pop this book on my shelf with this author’s other novels as I may want to read it again.
Anne Is Reading 