Jacqueline Winspear

Jacqueline Winspear is a British-American author best known for her long-running Maisie Dobbs mystery series, which she began in 2003. Born in Kent, England, she immigrated to the United States in the 1990s and has lived in California for many years. Her debut novel Maisie Dobbs introduced a protagonist whose life is shaped by her working-class origins, her wartime service as a nurse in the First World War, and her subsequent training as a psychologist and private inquiry agent in 1930s London. The series, spanning seventeen novels, is celebrated for its meticulous historical research, psychological depth, and the way it uses the mystery genre to explore the long aftermath of the First World War on British society. Winspear has received the Agatha Award, the Anthony Award, and multiple Macavity Awards. The Comfort of Ghosts (2024), the seventeenth and final book in the Maisie Dobbs series, brings Winspear’s protagonist to a deeply felt conclusion set in the final weeks of the Second World War.