mapmaking

The Cartographers, by Peng Shepherd

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What a find! I love maps. I mean, I really love maps. Especially paper ones, the kind you have to fold just right. When I was young, they were both a vehicle for dreams of adventure and a way to comprehend the space around me. Once I understood the grid of Baltimore and the spider rotaries of Worcester, the storied streets of London and the plazas of Madrid, I could venture out with confidence.

I also love mysteries, so I was delighted to come across this novel in my local indie bookstore. My expectations soared so high that I should be reporting disappointment now. In fact, they were not high enough. I loved the maps, the tangled mystery, and the true story that seeded the novel.

Nell Young loves maps and once dreamed of working with her brilliant father in the Map Room of the New York Public Library. Her even more brilliant cartographer mother died when Nell was a toddler. But Nell’s dream had exploded seven years ago in a disastrous argument with her father that destroyed the careers of both Nell and her then-boyfriend Felix. Now Nell works for a hole-in-the-wall operation that gussies up semi-historical maps with sea monsters and fake age spots.

Then she gets an emergency call from the New York Public Library.

Nell embarks on a quest to identify the monster behind a string of thefts and murder. In order to accomplish that, she must finally lay bare the secrets of the common highway map that caused the argument with her father and explore the mystery of her parents’ past. She forces herself to get in touch with Felix for the first time since that terrible argument; he is now working on a cutting-edge mega-map and might have technology that can help her.

Lately I’ve been thinking about goal shift—when I was an engineer we called it requirements creep—and how that can be a good thing in a story (though it isn’t in an engineering project). Writers know that what drives most stories is the protagonist’s push to achieve a goal, whether it’s destroying a ring of power or marrying your true love. However, often in a story, as that main character moves through adventure after adventure, their goal may change or may accrue related goals. For example, Frodo’s original goal was simply to hand over the ring to the Elves, not to go all the way to Mordor. Elizabeth Bennet’s original goal was to get her sister married to Mr. Bingley and to ignore the snobby Mr. Darcy.

Here, Nell’s journey grows tendril after tendril of secrets that must be unraveled, making for a delightfully complicated plot filled with surprises and satisfying shifts.

I often dislike novels with multiple points of view—different characters taking over telling the story—but here I found it worked well. For one thing, the change of voices is smoothly handled, usually by a new chapter. For another, each person in the team that coalesces around Nell has a piece of the story to tell, so having them tell it in their own voice is a clear and economical solution. We are never in doubt that Nell is the main character, no matter how much we may come to care about some of the others.

If you like a good mystery or maps or—even better—both, check out this book!

Have you read a novel about a map that you can recommend?

The Mapping of Love and Death, by Jacqueline Winspear

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Like many readers, I enjoy books that are part of a series. The initial plunge into the story is easy because the main characters are familiar, as is the world of the story. Winspear’s series featuring Maisie Dobbs starts in 1929 when Maisie sets up in business as an inquiry agent in London.

I find her a a delightful person to spend time with: calm, resourceful, full of common sense. She, like most of her generation, bears wounds from the Great War even ten years after the Armistice, at the start of the series. Her physical scars from the bombing of the medical station in France where she served as a nurse have healed. But her beloved Simon, a doctor who was more seriously injured in the same bombing, remains alive in a nursing home but brain-dead.

The other effects of the trauma she endured in France are heightened by the evidence of the war’s damage around her: the veterans who litter the streets, maimed in mind or body or both, often unable to find work; the women left without prospect of marriage after the decimation of a generation of men; the economic hardship and social uncertainty of a nation still measuring the cost of what’s more a cessation than a victory.

She also occupies a peculiar spot in England’s class structure, which at the time is still rigid if beginning to fray. Born to working class, she was placed in domestic service at 13, not uncommon at the time. However, once her employer Lady Rowan discovered Maisie’s yearning for education, she began supporting the girl’s education, roping in Maurice Blanche, a family friend who eventually trained her as a detective. Equally at home downstairs and upstairs, Maisie went on to enter Girton College, before leaving to enlist as a nurse.

In this outing, the seventh in the series, Maisie is hired by a wealthy couple from Boston whose son was killed in the war. His remains have just been found, a farmer having accidentally uncovered the bunker where Michael’s unit died under bombardment. Letters that he had on him, safely wrapped against the elements, indicate that he’d been having an affair with a nurse, and Michael’s parents are eager to find her to learn anything more about their son.

Taking on the task, Maisie must navigate the past, calling forth echoes of her own ordeals, as well as the present, with all of its dangers. Someone does not want her to succeed. She and her assistant Billy Beale are kept busy tracing out the various tentacles of the investigation while dealing with their own personal challenges.

The challenge for the writer of a series is that each book must show development of the main characters while at the same time ensure it can stand alone. There must be enough information from past books so the new reader is not lost, but little enough that the dedicated reader is not bored.

Winspear is adept at working in nuggets of explanation just when they are needed. I’m also becoming more appreciative of the character arc of Maisie across the series, as well as that of other characters, such as Billy Beale and his family, Lady Rowan and her family, Maurice Blanche, Maisie’s contacts at the police, and her one close friend Priscilla Partridge.

I started reading the series when it first came out, but lost track of it for awhile. Now I’ve started at the beginning and am reading straight through: a writer’s worst nightmare! Reading them in quick succession instead of waiting a year or more between them should make me quick to spot inconsistencies and be bored by duplicated information.

Instead, I have to marvel at the author’s artistry. I find Maisie’s development as a person even more fascinating than the cases she’s investigating—though there’s no lack of suspense and puzzles there. The real puzzle lies in us, the way each of us navigates our lives. This book, like the others in the series, demonstrates deep psychological insight combined with thorough research into the time period.

I admit it was my fascination with the Great War that first led me to these books, and they continue to add color to my own studies. But it is Maisie Dobbs who keeps me coming back.

Is there a series of books that you’ve particularly enjoyed?