This is the latest in the Maisie Dobbs series, which follows the eponymous heroine through some pretty pivotal decades – pre WW1 and now into WW2, a time of enormous upheaval and social change. She’s an interesting character because she defies a lot of the conventions of the time, but is more nuanced than simply being a woman who takes on the role that a man might play in an investigation.  The thing about the Maisie Dobbs books is that they could so easily tip into lazy stereotyping and for me, manage to avoid that through vivid depiction of Maisie’s interior life. They are always meticulously researched and thick with period detail, worn lightly throughout.

In The American Agent, Maisie’s briefed to look into the death of a young American journalist, at the height of the Blitz. It takes in the work of the pioneering burns unit led by Sir Archibald McIndoe, the Spanish Civil War, female friendship and what it really means to be a mother, along with a hint of romance and a thoroughly satisfying ending.  This for me is the ideal Sunday afternoon book, to be read lying on the sofa to the accompaniment of rain sliding down the windowpanes. It absorbs your attention without being overwhelming, and at the end, you’re left with a sense that everything in the world has assumed its right place.