Book Review – The Ghosts of Paris by Tara Moss @VERVE_Books

About the Book

It’s 1947. The world continues to grapple with the fallout of WWII, and former war reporter Billie Walker is finding her feet as an investigator. When a wealthy client hires Billie and her assistant Sam to track down her missing husband, the trail leads Billie to London and Paris, where painful memories of her own husband’s disappearance also lurk.

As Billie’s search for her client’s husband takes her from the swanky bars of Paris’s Ritz hotel and to the dank basements of the infamous Paris morgue, she’ll need to keep her gun at the ready. Something even more terrible than a few old memories might be following her around the City of Light…

Format: Paperback (352 pages) Publisher: Verve Books
Publication date: 21st November 2024 Genre: Historical Fiction, Crime

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My Review

The Ghosts of Paris is the second book in the author’s historical thriller series featuring Australian private enquiry agent Billie Walker. I definitely think it’s possible to enjoy The Ghosts of Paris without having read the first book, The War Widow, since the descriptions of the main characters and references to events in the previous book are sufficient to bring new readers up to date.

As in The War Widow, the legacy of the Second World War is never far away. Whether that’s physical scars, such as that of Billie’s assistant Sam, or continuing efforts to being Nazi war criminals to account. The terrible atrocities committed during the war, particularly on the population of Poland, are illustrated in the dramatic prologue.

Billie’s involvement in hunting down a criminal on the run has brought her notoriety and plenty of new clients, many of them women seeking evidence about errant husbands. Her latest client, Vera Montgomery, has a case that is a little too close to home, concerning as it does the unexplained disappearance of her husband Richard. That’s because the mystery of what happened to Billie’s husband, Jack, also remains unresolved. Can he still be alive having been missing for over two years or is he, as Billie has come to believe, dead?

The new case takes Billie and Sam to London and then Paris, a place Billie spent some time in during the war. There she is truly is surrounded by the ghosts of the past. More than she realises, as it happens. Their enquiries take them from the glamour of the Ritz hotel to the back streets of Montmartre. All the time, Billie can’t shake off the feeling that she’s being watched. But by whom and with what motive? She’s made plenty of enemies in her time, that’s for sure. Lucky then that she has her trusty pearl-handled Colt revolver tucked in her garter and loyal Sam at her side.

The standout scene in the book for me was Billie and Sam’s visit to the Paris morgue as they attempt to rule out the missing man’s disappearance is not the result of accident or foul play. It is utterly chilling.

All the different threads of the story are wrapped up pretty rapidly in the final chapters. But some things are left to be picked up in a future book, notably the changing relationship between Billie and Sam, and the lingering threat from those who still cling to Nazi ideology.

I could have done with a few less mentions of Billie applying her ‘Fighting Red’ lipstick, donning her sturdy Oxford shoes or exclaiming ‘Good Goddess’ but that’s probably just me. However, the twists and turns of the story, including a perilous encounter at Notre-Dame cathedral, and Billie’s tenacious pursuit of the truth kept me absorbed. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Corinne Davies who captured Billie’s feisty nature really well.

I received a review copy courtesy of Verve Books.

In three words: Intriguing, spirited, dramatic
Try something similar: The Comfort of Ghosts by Jacqueline Winspear

About the Author

Tara Moss is an internationally bestselling author, passionate and inspiring chronic pain and disability advocate, human rights activist, documentary and podcast host and former model. Her crime novels have been published in nineteen countries and thirteen languages, and her memoir, The Fictional Woman, was a #1 international bestseller. Moss is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and has received the Edna Ryan Award for significant contributions to feminist debate and for speaking out on behalf of women and children. In 2017, she was recognised as one of the Global Top 50 Diversity Figures in Public Life. (Photo: Goodreads)

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