Something has gone very wrong in the first 60 or so pages of the latest Maisie Dobbs mystery; author Jacqueline Winspear, usually adept at gracefully filling in details that readers may need if they haven't read her previous (16!) novels about the English sleuth, falters bigtime.
Awkward expository dialogue and repetitive information make the first few chapters slow going. The denouement isn't great, either, since the kidnapper — of an American World War II soldier stationed in rural England — is a character we've barely met.
But "Sunlit" sheds light on the United States' slow entry into the war, as well as the British response to that, while taking Maisie in bold new directions, personally and professionally, that suggest Winspear is on her way to righting the ship.
A Sunlit Weapon
By: Jacqueline Winspear.
Publisher: Harper, 368 pages, $27.99.
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