Review: The Comfort of Ghosts

The Comfort of Ghosts by Jacqueline Winspear
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

And so we come to Maisie Dobb's final outing, and I find I have read fewer of this series than I imagined, what delights await me when I go back , almost to the beginning to read books 2, 3, 4, 11, and 17 I wonder?

WW2 has ended and Britain is on the brink of bankruptcy with hordes of people made homeless by the Blitz and thousands of soldiers returning home, many with physical and mental injuries. Lord Julian Compton has died, but his Belgravia mansion is occupied by squatters and cannot therefore be sold to pay death duties. Maisie volunteers to fix the problem rather than bother Lord Julian's widow Lady Rowan. However, when she reaches the mansion she discovers the squatters are in fact four children, who seem terrified of the police, and a very sick man. Uncovering the truth about these children and what they saw forms the main mystery of this book.

But the mystery is really just an aside to the main thrust of the novel which canters through Maisie's past, touching on lost loves, friends, mentors, and secrets. Jacqueline Winspear also manages to deftly weave the birth of the NHS, the Burma death marches, the atomic bomb, the wanton destruction of many beautiful London properties by the London Council, the plight of orphans, the treatment of mental health issues, and the hypocrisy of the way society used to treat unmarried mothers, into the narrative without getting on a soap box or slowing the narrative. It's not without its flaws, there is at least one occasion where the reader is given a quick reminder of something that happened in the past, only for a very similar reminder to be given a few chapters later, and also I still can't really say I like Mark Scott he's all a bit 'I want, I want, I want'.

However, minor gripes aside, this is a superb finale to a wonderful series that has taken us from 1929 to 1945 but also with flashbacks to WW1 and Maisie's childhood.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

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