CBR17 Bingo: White – Behold, the cover. Also, a bonus! The title.
Elinor is a veteran of two world wars and a trained killer, but all she wants now is to retreat into a peaceful, solitary existence in the English countryside. But when a violent past comes back to haunt her neighbors, she cannot help but become drawn in.
I’m sure I’ll eventually get around to checking out Winspear’s long-running Maisie Dobbs series, but in the meanwhile I figured I’d pick up the standalone The White Lady, which was exiting to me because it combined a world war espionage storyline with an after-the-war mystery, in which I anticipated Elinor would crack a lot of skulls together.
Well, we do get some skulls cracked together, and plenty of laws broken (mostly revolving around petrol rationing). The present-day storyline held my attention the whole way through, and so did the part of the story dealing with World War 1 in Belgium. Elinor is a complex, well-sketched character who you want to find a happy ending, despite the difficult hand life has dealt her. The restrained writing just enhances the horror of her experiences during the war.
However, I did think the ending tied up rather tidily and easily – while I understand why the story of the Mackie gang closes the way it does, it seemed to lose the point of all of Elinor’s sleuthing in the current timeline.
More frustrating was how the theme of children in war was handled. Elinor’s experiences in the First World War colors (maybe ruins?) the rest of her life, and the ethics of Elinor and Cecily’s involvement in sabotage efforts as children are played around with, but in the end the author almost seems to wave it off. I would have appreciated it if the author had really committed to grappling that thorny issue all the way through. Instead, we are left feeling that there was something left to be said.
I listened to the audiobook of this book, which is narrated by Orlagh Cassidy. I had fun with her variety of British accents, though I can’t speak for the veracity of her Belgian ones.