** spoiler alert ** I got this book from my mystery guild but in many ways the mystery is secondary. This is almost a literary novel dealing with how war wounds people with a little of Ghost Hunters mixed in. It’s set in an underutilized setting, the time period between the world wars. It’s set in England in 1922 and the point of view character is Sarah Piper. Sarah is on her own working with a temp agency. Her life is as she puts it a temporary life. She seems to just be going through the motions, temporary job, temp housing, temp lovers. There is a deep pain inside of her.

She is called in to meet Mr. Alastair Gellis, a wealthy young man. His usual assistant can’t be there at the moment and he has the ghost hunting case of a life time. Unlike the ghosts he’s written about in the past, this was totally unknown. Later we find out that Sarah was chosen for an ulterior motive as well.

Sarah has no idea what she’s getting into. There is no ‘is there or isn’t there a ghost.’ The ghost of Maddy Clare is very much real and terrifying. They learn that Maddy was very obviously sexually abused and beaten until she escaped to the Clare estate. Feeling pity for the serving girl, Mrs. Clare took her in. She remained terrified of men then one day she hung herself in the barn which she haunts rather maliciously if a man is around. Mrs. Clare wants her cleared out.

Alastair’s partner, Matthew Ryder shows up and he is as coarse as Alastair is refined. They made a very interesting threesome, all damaged people. Sarah and her painful secret, Alastair with his shellshock and Matthew was severely burned and scarred in the war. As they begin to research Maddy, the ghost takes over their lives and they end up fighting to save their sanity and to find who killed and gang raped her so she’ll move on and leave everyone in peace.

I found this surprisingly intriguing. It’s not a really strong mystery. It’s relatively easy to figure out however, it’s more the story of Alastair, Matthew and Sarah than anything else. The romance feels a tad rushed (then again most romances do to me.) One of the sex scenes is definitely more creepy than romantic but I suspect it was meant to. It highlights just how damaged these people are.

Sarah interested me. She’s not the feisty unconventional woman of her time and that was oddly refreshing. Usually we get the young woman who is not like the other women, more outspoken etc etc and usually wealthy. Sarah is just this side of poor and she isn’t particularly strong or so she thinks. She does do brave things. While she might go on about not being strong a little too often, she IS far more typical of a woman in the 1920s and I liked seeing that even though as a modern woman it was a bit uncomfortable in some ways. While this didn’t end up looking like it could be a series, I’d like to see them again.