Canadian-Australian author Tara Moss sends her elegant private eye, Billie Walker, to the City of Light in her second historical mystery, The Ghosts of Paris. Billie, living in Sydney in 1947, successfully runs her late father's private inquiry agency. She's recovering from a recent high-profile case involving a Nazi war criminal, a case detailed in The War Widow, the first novel in the Billie Walker series. After a wealthy client hires Billie to search for her husband, who went missing on a business trip to London and Paris two years before, Billie and her assistant, Sam, embark on a worldwide journey. Billie is also searching for answers of her own: her husband, fellow wartime correspondent Jack Rake, disappeared in Warsaw during the war, but she has new information indicating he may still be alive.
Moss writes sensitively about the layers of sexism facing professional women in the 1940s, both in Australia and Europe. Billie's sometime colleague Shyla, an Indigenous Wiradjuri woman, also provides insight into Australia's pervasive racism. Billie herself is a compelling protagonist, who deals honestly with the conflicting motivations that necessitate her journey as well as her (possibly) shifting feelings for both Sam and Jack. The plot starts slowly but ratchets up to a rapid-fire pace, and it includes a car chase, clandestine meetings and other surprises. Moss also explores the thriving gay scene in Paris and the rampant homophobia in Sydney and London. Though the answers Billie digs up (for herself and her client) are confusing rather than clear-cut, Moss sets the scene for further adventures for her detective. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams