London, 1933. Two months after the body of an Indian woman named Usha Pramal is found in the brackish water of a South London canal, her brother, newly arrived in England, turns to Maisie Dobbs to find out the truth about her death. Not only has Scotland Yard made no arrests, evidence indicates that they failed to conduct a full and thorough investigation.

Maisie Dobbs takes on her most personal case yet, a twisting investigation into the brutal killing of a street peddler that will take her from the working-class neighborhoods of her childhood into London's highest circles of power. Set in London between the two world wars.

Arriving in turbulent 1937 Gibraltar in the aftermath of a tragedy, Maisie Dobbs raises the British Secret Service's suspicions through her involvement in the murder of a Sephardic Jewish photographer.

August 1914: Michael Clifton is mapping the land he has just purchased in California's beautiful Santa Ynez Valley, certain that oil lies beneath its surface. But as the young cartographer prepares to return home to Boston, war is declared in Europe and Michael puts duty first and sails for his father's native country to serve in the British army. Three years later, he is listed among the missing. April 1932: London psychologist and investigator Maisie...

Maisie is asked to investigate a potential land purchase. Her inquiries take her to a village in Kent during the hop picking season. Mysterious fires erupt in the village and a series of petty crimes suggest a darker criminal element at work. A peculiar secrecy shrouds the village, and Maisie needs to use her skills to solve one of her most intriguing cases yet.