MAISIE DOBBS: JACQUELINE WINSPEAR

This is the first in a series of novels with Maisie as the protagonist.  We learn about her early life, growing up in modest circumstances before being taken in by Lady Rowan Compton as a servant, but her quick intelligence and heart are recognized by Lady Rowan.  At the suggestion of her friend, Maurice Blanche, Maisie applies and is accepted at Cambridge, only to see her education interrupted by the war.  She volunteers as a nurse, is sent to France, where she experiences first hand the horrors of WW I.  She returns to Cambridge, finishes her degree and apprentices as a sleuth under the watchful eye of Maurice Blanche before going off on her own.  She takes on veteran, Billy Beale, as her investigator and between the two of them, they sense something fishy about The Retreat, a home for soldiers suffering from what we would call PTSD.  They are right.