The White Lady

A satisfying “mystery” about a former Belgian saboteur for the Allies during World Wars I and II. Elinor has tried to live a quiet life after a whole lot of wartime trauma, but her instincts to protect her neighbors — a young couple with a small daughter — get amped up when the husband's Crime Mob family comes calling. I'd read and enjoyed previous Winspear books (quite a few of the Maisie Dobbs books before I fell off that wagon), and when this one was picked for my neighborhood book club, I thought sure! Why not!

So Elinor and Maisie have some overlap, even though Elinor is not a detective per se — she developed a friendship with a detective when they were both stationed with an organization during the Second World War, and so she works with him trying to learn more the Crime Mob family, but he keeps kinda brushing her off, so what's a former spy to do but do all the legwork herself?

Satisfying in that it all wrapped up in a little bow, and that Elinor was able to set boundaries for herself about who she would and would not be seeing again after releasing the wartime memories, but not necessarily from a bad-guy-goes-to-jail perspective.