Spring 1937. In the four years since she left England, Maisie Dobbs has experienced love, contentment, stability--and the deepest tragedy a woman can endure. Now, all she wants is the peace she believes she might find by returning to India. But her sojourn in the hills of Darjeeling is cut short when her stepmother summons her home to England; her aging father Frankie Dobbs is not getting any younger. But on a ship bound for England, Maisie realized she isn't ready to return. Agains the wishes of the captain, she disembarks in Gilbraltar. Thoush she is on her own, Maisie is far from alone: the British garrison town is teeming with refugees fleeing a brutal civil war across the border in Spain. Yet the danger is very real. Days after Maisie's arrive, a photographer and member of Gibraltar's Sephardic Jewish community is murdered and Maisie becomes entanged in the case, drawing the attention of the British Secret Service.

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.