House of Ghosts

A House of Ghosts- W.C. Ryan 
Simon & Schuster
Release Date: October 1, 2019

Rating:
📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: Winter 1917. As the First World War enters its most brutal phase, back home in England, everyone is seeking answers to the darkness that has seeped into their lives. At Blackwater Abbey, on an island off the Devon coast, armaments manufacturer Lord Highmount has arranged a spiritualist gathering to contact his two sons, both of whom died at the front.

Among the guests, two have been secretly dispatched from the intelligence service: Kate Cartwright, a friend of the family who lost her beloved brother at the Somme and who, in the realm of the spiritual, has her own special gift; and the mysterious Captain Donovan, recently returned from Europe. Top secret plans for weapons developed by Lord Highmount’s company have turned up in Berlin, and there is reason to believe enemy spies will be in attendance. As the guests arrive, it becomes clear that each has something they would rather keep hidden. Then, when a storm descends, they find themselves trapped on the island. Soon one of their number will die. For Blackwater Abbey is haunted in more ways than one . . . .

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During the darkest days of World War I no one is unaffected.  A house party at the island home of armaments manufacturer Lord Highmount is arranged to attempt to contact the spirits of those they've lost to the war.  But the party has another purpose- copies of Highmount's weapons designs have appeared in Berlin and both Highmount and the government want to flush out the spy. Highmount family friend Kate Cartwright and government agent Captain Donovan are sent in to identify the traitor. Soon, in a house with a reputation for being haunted, the living have as much to fear from each other as from any ghost.  

A House of Ghosts is a wonderful mystery novel, well-written and full of twists and turns, red herrings, and surprises.  It's a book that instantly calls up comparisons with Agatha Christie mysteries: an isolated Devon island home, a trapped house party, everyone at the party has secrets and hidden agendas, and there may or may not be a murderer among the guests.  W.C. Ryan makes A House of Ghosts unique with strong leading characters and a touch of the supernatural.

Kate and Donovan surprise themselves (but not the reader!) by becoming excellent partners, each with their own special skills. Kate's been stuck in Room 40 (the World War I precursor to the more famous Bletchley Park of World War II) breaking codes on weather reports, so when the mysterious C asks her to help with this case, she's happy to do so- even though it involves a haunted house with bad memories for her and pretending that her newly ex-fiancé is still her current fiancé.  She's an excellent blend of innocent and eager, with no naïveté about her, an intelligent woman who wants to do her part for the war effort and discover how her brother died.  

 Donovan is the hardbitten, mysterious agent who thinks he's jaded beyond saving, and suffers from PTSD from years at the front.  He's surprised to discover how much he enjoys working with Kate, and soon comes to think of her in far more than professional terms.  I was very happy that, even as Donovan and Kate's personal relationship develops, Donovan never treats Kate as less than his partner.  He may worry over the danger she's in, but he doesn't deny her the right to her part of the action and trusts that she can handle herself.

The supernatural angle was, I thought, particularly well-done here.  House of Ghosts never becomes a horror novel.  The book balances the rational skepticism of people like Donovan with Kate and her mother- who can see ghosts and even, occasionally, more with the help of a family artifact.  Seances  would have been common during the war and the two supposed psychics on the island are treated like  gifted people trying to help the grieving parents of soldiers.  Whether they are in fact genuinely trying to help or have a scam in mind is only one of the tangles facing Donovan and Kate. But the supernatural angle is treated so matter-of-factly that people who don't want ghosts with their mysteries should still enjoy House of Ghosts without too much skepticism.  And those of us who like a bit of supernatural to add to the drama are well rewarded.