Murder at Merewood Hospital by Michelle Salter
The patients survived the Great War only to face a new danger…
In 1916, Sister Helen Hopgood was sent with a team of nurses to care for wounded soldiers at Merewood Farm, a temporary military hospital in Hampshire.
Now the war is over, only five patients remain – and she is the only nurse. The last ward must close, and Helen is doing all she can to find new homes for the injured servicemen.
Joseph Wintringham has to sell the farm to keep MerewoodManor. But since the murder of Nurse Taplin, locals believe the place is cursed - perhaps by the doomed nurse or by the patients who perished from their war wounds.
Is the hospital haunted? Or is someone very real behind the unnatural deaths that begin on Midsummer’s Night 1919?
Can Helen discover the truth before it’s too late..?
About the author
Michelle Salter writes historical cosy crime set in Hampshire, where she lives, and inspired by real-life events in 1920s Britain. The first book in her Iris Woodmore series, Death at Crookham Hall, draws on her interest in the aftermath of the Great War and the suffragette movement.
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Review
As a fan of the author’s ’Iris Woodmore’ series I was very keen to read this stand-alone novel and it did not disappoint! It was rich in historical details and educational on the after-effects of the war on the soldiers and also the nurses that were on the battlefields as well. An examination of both the physical and mental effects and how these were dealt with in a hospital setting.
Nurse Helen Hopgood is the last nurse at Merewood Hospital and along with the doctor is in charge of a handful of patients, as the hospital is about to close. The owners of nearby Merewood Manor are needing the sell the building the hospital has been housed in during the war. Sadly, the year before a young nurse was found dead in the nearby woods in suspicious circumstances and the crime was never solved. When one of the patients is found drowned in the lake on the estate, Helen wonders whether it is related the the murder last year.
Michelle manages to create nuanced and well-balanced characters. I might not have found them likeable, although I warmed more to Helen as the story progressed. The mystery aspect of the story was interesting and held my attention and I certainly didn't work it all out. The author manages to create suspicion and the differing POVs mean that you are kept guessing all the way through.
Let me know if you pick this one up!
