The Ghost of Christmas Past
A Molly Murphy Mystery
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4.6 • 71 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From Rhys Bowen, the author of In Farleigh Field, comes the next Molly Murphy mystery: The Ghost of Christmas Past.
Semi-retired private detective Molly Murphy Sullivan is suffering from depression after a miscarriage following her adventure in San Francisco during the earthquake of 1906. She and her husband, Daniel, are invited for Christmas at a mansion on the Hudson, and they gratefully accept, expecting a peaceful and relaxing holiday season.
Not long after they arrive, however, they start to feel the tension in the house’s atmosphere. Then they learn that the host couple's young daughter wandered out into the snow ten years ago and was never seen again. Molly can identify with the mother's pain at never knowing what happened to her child and wants to help, but there is so little to go on. No ransom note. No body ever found. But Molly slowly begins to suspect that the occupants of the house know more than they are letting on.
Then, on Christmas Eve, there is a knock at the door and a young girl stands there. "I'm Charlotte," she says. "I've come home."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A moving opening compensates only in part for the uninspired plot of Agatha-winner Bowen's 17th Molly Murphy mystery. In 2016's Time of Fog and Fire, Molly miscarried while she was in San Francisco to save her husband, NYPD Capt. Daniel Sullivan, and she can now only view the world "through a black veil." In December 1906, Molly, Daniel, and their two-year-old son, Liam, leave New York City for Westchester County to spend Christmas with Daniel's mother, who's recovering from a serious case of pneumonia. When she's invited to Greenbriars, an old friend's house on the Hudson, they join her there. At Greenbriars, Molly gets engrossed in a decade-old unsolved mystery: the disappearance of the then three-year-old Charlotte Van Aiken, the daughter of the house's owner. The revelation of Charlotte's fate relies on an extremely unlikely coincidence that diminishes the emotional aspects of the lingering wound her vanishing caused to her family; even series fans may find it a contrivance too far.
Customer Reviews
Heartwarming
Although I figured out some of the mystery early on, I enjoyed this installment