As always with this series British voice over actress Nicola Barber narrates superbly. Rhys Bowen packs a lot of action and complexity into this shorter than usual 7 hour audio novel. Molly Murphy Sullivan quickly adapts to her detective self and works toward resolving the issues helping her overcome her grieving. This novel is not so much about Christmas as about a complex web of criminal issues related to the family they are visiting for the holiday. The Sullivan family along with their Irish governess are invited to spend the holiday with a wealthy family outside NYC. Molly is deeply depressed grieving a miscarriage and it is the Christmas season. The year is likely 1908, but the novel does not make the year clear. The Ghost of Christmas Past finds Molly and their two year old son in New York with her husband just returning from a brief assignment with the federal government in Washington DC to hopefully his police captains job in New York.
Then she and her family are caught in the San Francisco earthquake in a harrowing experience. The early novels were light and fun, but then she moves to the US and gets married to policeman Daniel Sullivan and has a son. The Molly Murphy series starts with Molly being a very young private detective in Great Britain. The lady is 76 years old and she continues to prolifically write wonderful historical mystery novels. First there was her Constable Evan Evans series beginning in 1999 followed by her Molly Murphy series beginning in 2001of which this novel is the 17th then followed by Her Royal Spyness series with the 12th novel to be published next summer and finally this year's possible standalone WWII novel In Farleigh Field. I must start by admitting there is a very special place in my heart for the historical mystery novels of author Janet Quin-Harkin writing using the pen name of Rhys Bowen. Then, on Christmas Eve, there is a knock at the door and a young girl stands there. But Molly slowly begins to suspect that the occupants of the house know more than they are letting on. 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. Then they learn that the host couple's young daughter wandered out into the snow ten years ago and was never seen again.
Not long after they arrive, however, they start to feel the tension in the house's atmosphere. 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. 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. From Rhys Bowen, the author of In Farleigh Field, comes the next Molly Murphy mystery: The Ghost of Christmas Past.
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