

The little girl billeted at Maisie's home in Kent does not, or cannot, speak, and the authorities do not know who the child belongs to or who might have put her on the "Operation Pied Piper" evacuee train. And as Maisie delves deeper into the killings of the dispossessed from the "last war," a new kind of refugee - an evacuee from London - appears in Maisie's life. In a London shadowed by barrage balloons, bomb shelters and the threat of invasion, within days another former Belgian refugee is found murdered.

Francesca Thomas has an urgent assignment for Maisie: to find the killer of a man who escaped occupied Belgium as a boy, some twenty-three years earlier during the Great War. At the moment Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain broadcasts to the nation Britain's declaration of war with Germany, a senior Secret Service agent breaks into Maisie Dobbs' flat to await her return. As Britain declares war on Germany, the indomitable Maisie Dobbs stumbles on the deaths of refugees who may have been more than ordinary people seeking sanctuary on English soil. The thirteenth installment in Jacqueline Winspear's enormously popular New York Times bestselling mystery series.

"A female investigator every bit as brainy and battle-hardened as Lisbeth Salander." - Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air, on Maisie Dobbs
