Ancienne infirmière pendant la Première guerre mondiale, Maisie Dobbs n'est pas une femme comme les autres. Dotée d'un talent particulier pour mener des enquêtes, elle vient d'ouvrir son agence de détective à Londres.
Et, en cette période troublée, ce ne sont pas les clients qui manquent. Sir Lawton, un éminent avocat, lui confie une mission délicate  : prouver que son fils, un aviateur, a bien disparu pendant la guerre. Est-il réellement mort dans le crash de son avion comme l'armée l'a affirmé  ?
Lancée sur les traces du fils Lawton, Maisie Dobbs se retrouve face à un tissu d'incohérences et de mensonges. Au fur et à mesure, la détective est confrontée à d'autres disparitions troublantes et une affaire de meurtre. D'inavouables secrets que certains sont prêts à tout pour garder enfouis à jamais...
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Jacqueline Winspear's marvelous debut, Maisie Dobbs, won her fans from coast to coast and raised her intuitive, intelligent, and resourceful heroine to the ranks of literature's favorite sleuths. Birds of a Feather, its follow-up, finds psychologist and private investigator Maisie Dobbs on another dangerously intriguing adventure in London "between the wars." It is the spring of 1930, and Maisie has been hired to find a runaway heiress. But what seems a simple case at the outset soon becomes increasingly complicated when three of the heiress's old friends are found dead. Is there a connection between the woman's mysterious disappearance and the murders? Who would want to kill three seemingly respectable young women? As Maisie investigates, she discovers that the answers lie in the unforgettable agony of the Great War.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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Lady Rowan Compton first met Maisie when, at thirteen, she went into service as a maid at her ladyships Belgravia mansion. A suffragette, Lady Rowan took the remarkably smart youngster under her wing and became her patron. She encouraged Maisie to study at Cambridge, and was aided in this by Maurice Blanche, a friend often retained as an investigator by the elite of Europe when discretion and results were required. It was he who first recognized Maisies intuitive gifts.
The outbreak of war changed everything. Maisie left for France to train as a nurse, then served at the front, where she fell in love with a handsome young doctor.
After the Armistice, in the spring of 1929, Maisie hangs out her shingle: M. Dobbs, Trade and Personal Investigations. Her very first case involves suspected infidelity but turns up something else, a tombstone with only a first name--Vincent. And then she finds another. The deceased had lived on a cooperative farm called The Retreat, a well-regarded convalescent refuge for those grievously wounded in the war, ex-soldiers too shattered to resume normal life. When Lady Rowans son makes plans to join the reclusive community, Maisie hurriedly investigates and finds a disturbing mystery at its core whose resolution gives her the courage to confront the ghost that has haunted her for ten years.
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1932. The remains of a young American cartographer, listed as missing in action, are unearthed in a French field, and his devastated parents engage investigator Maisie Dobbs, hoping she can find the unnamed nurse whose love letters were among their late son's belongings.

April, 1933. To the costermongers of London, Eddie Pettit is simply a gentle soul with a near-magical gift for working with horses. When he is killed in a violent accident, the costers are sceptical about the cause of his death, and recruit Maisie Dobbs to investigate. Maisie, who has known these men since childhood and remembers Eddie fondly, is eager to help.But it soon becomes clear that powerful political and financial forces are equally determined to prevent her from learning too much about Eddie's death. As Maisie uncovers lies and manipulation on a national scale, she must decide whether to risk all to see justice done.

In the summer of 1932, Maisie Dobbs's career takes an exciting new turn when she accepts an undercover assignment directed by Scotland Yard's Special Branch and the Secret Service. Posing as a junior lecturer, she is sent to a college in Cambridge to monitor any activities ‘not in the interests of the Crown'.When the college's controversial pacifist founder and principal, Greville Liddicote, is murdered, Maisie is directed to stand back as Detective Chief Superintendent Robert MacFarlane and Detective Chief Inspector Richard Stratton spearhead the investigation. She soon discovers, however, that the circumstances of Liddicote's death appear inextricably linked to the suspicious comings and goings of faculty and students under her surveillance.As the storm clouds of World War II gather on the horizon, Maisie must overcome a reluctant Secret Service, discover shameful hidden truths about Britain's conduct during the Great War, and face off against the rising powers of the Nazi Party.
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With the country in the grip of economic malaise, Maisie Dobbs is relieved to accept an apparently straightforward assignment to investigate a potential land purchase. Her inquiries take her to a picturesque village in Kent during the hop-picking season, but beneath its pastoral surface she finds evidence that something is amiss. Mysterious fires erupt in the village with alarming regularity, and a series of petty crimes suggest a darker criminal element at work. A peculiar secrecy shrouds the village, and ultimately Maisie must draw on her finely-honed skills of detection to solve one of her most intriguing cases yet.

Christmas Eve, 1931. On the way to see a client, Maisie Dobbs witnesses a man committing suicide on a busy London street. The following day, the Prime Minister's office receives a letter threatening a massive loss of life if certain demands are not met - and the writer mentions Maisie by name. Tapped by Scotland Yard's elite Special Branch to be a special adviser on the case, Maisie is soon involved in a race against time to find a man who proves he has the knowledge and will to inflict destruction on thousands of innocent people.In Among the Mad, Jacqueline Winspear combines a heart-stopping story with a rich evocation of a fascinating period to create her most compelling and satisfying novel yet.
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London, 1933. Some two months after an Indian woman, Usha Pramal, is found murdered in a South London canal, her brother turns to Maisie Dobbs to find the truth about her death. Not only has Scotland Yard made no arrests, but evidence indicates they failed to conduct a full and thorough investigation.Before her death, Usha was staying at an ayah's hostel, a refuge for Indian women whose British employers had turned them out. As Maisie learns, Usha was different from the hostel's other lodgers. But with this discovery comes new danger soon another Indian woman who was close to Usha is found murdered before she can speak out.As Maisie is pulled deeper into an unfamiliar yet alluring subculture, her investigation becomes clouded by the unfinished business of a previous case. And at the same time her lover, James Compton, gives her an ultimatum she cannot ignore...
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London 1930. Maisie Dobbs, the renowned psychologist and investigator, receives a most unusual request. She must prove that Sir Cecil Lawton's son Ralph is really dead.This is a case that will challenge Maisie in unexpected ways, for Ralph Lawton was an aviator shot down by enemy fire in 1917. To get to the bottom of the mystery, Maisie must travel to the former battlefields of northern France, where she served as a nurse in the Great War and where ghosts of her past still linger. As her investigation moves closer to the truth, Maisie soon uncovers the secrets and lies that some people would prefer remain buried.

London 1931. When controversial artist Nick Bassington-Hope is found dead, the police believe it is an open and shut case and his death from a fall is recorded as 'accidental'. But his sister is not convinced, so she turns to Maisie Dobbs for help, drawn by the investigator's growing reputation for her unique methods of solving crimes.Moving from the desolate beaches of the English coast to the dark underbelly of post-war London, and full of intriguing characters, Maisie's new investigation entertains and enthrals at every turn.

By July 1914, the ties between Kezia Marchant and Thea Brissenden, friends since girlhood, have become strained - by Thea's passionate embrace of women's suffrage and by the imminent marriage of Kezia to Thea's brother, Tom, who runs the family farm. When Kezia and Tom wed just a month before war is declared between Britain and Germany, Thea's gift to Kezia is a book on household management - a veiled criticism of the bride's ordinary life to come. Yet when Tom enlists to fight and Thea is drawn reluctantly onto the battlefield herself, the farm becomes Kezia's responsibility. Each must find a way to endure the ensuing cataclysm and turmoil. As Tom marches to the front lines and Kezia battles to keep her ordered life from unravelling, they hide their despair in letters filled with stories woven to bring comfort. But will well-intended lies and self-deception be of use when they come face-to-face with the enemy?
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Four years after she set sail from England, leaving everything she most loved behind, Maisie Dobbs at last returns, only to find herself in a dangerous place. In Jacqueline Winspear's powerful story of political intrigue and personal tragedy, a brutal murder in the British garrison town of Gilbraltar leads Maisie into a web of lies, deceit, and peril.