This book was a little outside the norm for what I usually read but I did really enjoy it.

Billie was an excellent, strong, capable mfc. The story takes place post World War II and she does her job amazingly well given the ridiculous expectations placed on women at this time.

I enjoyed her relationship with Sam. He was so sweet. I'd be interested to read future books in this series to see if their relationship progresses.

The story did feel a bit slow in the beginning but definitely picked up once they got to Paris. The storyline with Jack was the one that kept me most interested. I found myself flying through the last half of the book wanting to know what happened.

*I received a copy of this e-book in exchange for an honest review*
Just as good maybe better than the first. This author is definitely one of my top five favorite authors.

A light, pleasant read, despite some serious topics, including Nazi atrocities and post-war treatment of women and minorities. Moss keeps readers entertained throughout. If you are looking for a light historical mystery this is the perfect choice.
3.5 Stars

When a wealthy client hires Billie and her assistant Sam to track down her missing husband, the trail leads Billie back to London and Paris, where Billie's own painful memories also lurk. The search takes her to both the swanky bars at Paris's famous Ritz hotel and to the dank basements of the infamous Paris morgue. But something even more terrible than a few painful memories might be following her around the city of lights.

I enjoyed this book! Especially the descriptions of 1940s London and Paris! Billie is a great character! She's strong, independent and making a name for herself in a time where women didn't work in her profession. I hope there are more books to come! It's a compelling story full of secrets, mystery and plenty of action!

It is 1947. Billie Walker, private enquiry agent, working in Sydney Australia, has become rather notorious after a Nazi war criminal died in a fall from her office balcony at the end of her last major case. Now, Vera Montgomery, a wealthy client wants to find her husband Robert who disappeared, possibly in France, in 1945. Billie is ambivalent about the need to travel to Paris, which is filled with memories of her husband, last seen in Warsaw during a violent time near the end of the war. She wonders if she will be able to get more information about what happened to him. It has been three years since she last heard from him. She assumes he is dead.

The Ghosts of Paris is a nicely crafted detective story, with most of the action taking place in postwar London and Paris. Billie and her hunky assistant Sam travel together to seek out Montgomery and confirm his death or secure a divorce and financial settlement for his wife. Along the way, they run into far more excitement then they bargained for. Moss creates a sense of the time with the rubble of London, bombed tirelessly and Paris, left comparatively untouched, of the Nuremberg trials and executions of Nazi war crimes, of Odessa activities, good guys cloak and dagger action and a neat view of LGBTQ legal issues in Australia, where homosexual acts were still criminalized, and Paris, where they were not.

All in all this was a fun, wanted to keep getting back to it, story. Well written and well conceived.

This wasn't a real standout for me, it became very formulaic and in a very crowded market of books set in the same circumstances I'm not sure it's a necessary purchase.

I really liked the second in the Billie Walker series. Billie is a private inquiry agent in Australia, when she is hired to find a missing husband. Vera has not seen her husband for two years and is ready to move on. Offered all expenses paid and twice her rate, Billie accepts the challenge which takes her to London and Paris post WWII. It is 1947, and Billie herself has not seen her own husband, not knowing whether he is dead or alive. My only hesitation to give five stars was the repeating of the term dear Sam every time she addressed her assistant, which felt inauthentic and annoying. Otherwise, I highly recommend this series, starting with The War Widow. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

So the adventure of Ms. Billie Walker, Private Investigator, continued. This time, her latest job delivered her to London and Paris, far away from her Sydney residence.

Billie was hired by a wealthy woman to find her missing husband who was last seen in London and Paris. The woman’s situation eerily mirrored her own, with her husband, Jack Rake, missing in Europe in the chaos of war. Motivated by the great sum offered, as well as her own desire to find more information about her missing husband, Billie started a long journey, accompanied by the beloved, loyal Sam.

After the events that happened in the first book, Billie had become famous, or infamous, within a certain community. As a result, danger was always lurking wherever she went.

I loved that the stakes were higher in this book. The travelling element brought so much freshness to the story - I loved the plane journey (and the migraines that were common to follow at that time - I found this hilarious!), the countryside driving, and the Paris backdrop.

There was an explosive development that happened towards the end of the book. After picking up my jaw from the floor, I immediately checked out when the next Billie Walker book would be out - alas, no news yet!

I didn’t expect to be this captivated by the series, but I was!

In The Ghosts of Paris, Billie is back and we are quickly taken from Australia to London and Paris as Billie tries to locate missing husband Richard Montgomery for her client Vera. By her side is her trusty assistant Sam Baker.

For Billie being back also brings back memories and questions of her own missing husband photojournalist Jack Rake.

What a ride this book was!! Billie is soon swept up in the mystery with nasty villains trying to stop her. Set in 1947 I just love reading this historical mystery set in this time. The research Tara Moss does is incredible. You feel like you could be right there with Billie.

I'm such a fan of Billie and I can't want for her next adventure. She isn't done yet!!

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC.

✨ The Ghosts of Paris by Tara Moss has a great concept, but didn't deliver for me in the end. The pacing was off for me and I liked but didn't love the main characters. 3⭐

🇦🇺 This is Book 2 of the Billie Walker series. Billie is a private investigator in 1940s Australia. She and her assistant, Sam, go to London and Paris to look for a client's missing husband. Paris is also the last known location of Billie's husband Jack, who is also missing. Billie and Sam try to track down both men and avoid the people following them.

🇫🇷 This book took a long time for me to get into. There were several inconsistencies that I couldn't shake. Billie uses some references that don't fit the time period (she says "this isn't my first rodeo" several times). While I appreciate that Billie has anti-racist, mostly pro-LGBTQ views, it felt like rewriting history. I think it was written that way to make modern readers comfortable, and those views seem inauthentic to the 1940s.

💄I did like the ending, which bumped this up in stars for me. There were interesting themes of loyalty, freedom, feminism, and fresh starts.

⚠️ infidelity, death in war, racism, homophobia, war crimes, scenes in a catacomb and a morgue

Thank you to @duttonbooks and @netgalley for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Shareability: readers who enjoy WW2 novels and reading about oldtime Sydney, London, and Paris

Spice: n/a

Pairs well with: bright red lipstick (Billie's favorite shade is called "Fighting Red") 💋 & a trenchcoat

Book Review
The Ghosts of Paris by Tara Moss
Published: June 7, 2022
Publisher: Dutton
Rating: 3.5 ⭐️

Shoutout to Netgalley, the publisher, and Tara Moss for my digital copy of the book. All opinions are my own.

Synopsis from Amazon: "It’s 1947. The world continues to grapple with the fallout of the Second World War, and former war reporter Billie Walker is finding her feet as an investigator. When a wealthy client hires Billie and her assistant Sam to track down her missing husband, the trail leads Billie back to London and Paris, where Billie’s own painful memories also lurk. Jack Rake, Billie's wartime lover and, briefly, husband, is just one of the millions of people who went missing in Europe during the war. What was his fate after they left Paris together?
As Billie's search for her client's husband takes her to both the swanky bars at Paris's famous Ritz hotel and to the dank basements of the infamous Paris morgue, she'll need to keep her gun at the ready, because something even more terrible than a few painful memories might be following her around the city of lights . . ."

My thoughts: I really enjoyed this unique historical fiction novel. Most set around World War 2 seem to all be about the same. This one offered not only a fresh perspective, a woman investigator with a male assistant, but also a new location too! I loved finding out about how WW2 effected Australians. You don't hear that area mentioned often.
The writing was good and clean, nothing to get hung up on. I also very much enjoyed Billie's character. Her spunkiness and defiance were too much fun. She was never afraid to do or say what was right.
If you're looking for something different in the historical fiction genre, I recommend checking this one out.

#netgalley #theghostsofparis #taramoss #bookreviews #bookreviewer #arcreads #duttonpublishing #historicalfiction #unique #Australia #billiewalker

It is 1947, and in Europe both victors and vanquished struggle to rebuild shattered lives, towns, cities and democracy itself. Although nearly 30,000 Australian servicemen lost their lives, their homeland remained physically untouched. Former war reporter Billie Walker has set up as a private investigator in Sydney and, with her assistant Sam, is making a decent go of things, but their cases are very parochial and largely mundane. Then everything changes. She accepts a case to investigate the disappearance of Richard Montgomery, last heard of in London, and possibly Paris.

This book is full of interesting historical detail, some of which was new to me. For example, I never knew that flights between Australia and Britain at the time were often made in hastily converted Lancaster bombers, renamed 'Lancastrians'. Billie and Sam, aboard one of these lumbering giants, take three days to reach London, and when their hearing and sleep patterns have returned to normal, they begin their investigation.


It soon becomes clear that the Richard Montgomery's London trail has gone cold, and so the pair move to Paris where, from their luxurious HQ of the Paris Ritz they start to make enquiries. At this point, some of the back-story needs telling. Billie Walker was once married to Jack Rake, another war reporter and photographer, but in the vicious chaos that was wartime Central Europe, they became separated. Jack was last heard of in Poland but Billie has had no communication of any kind from him since then, and she fears he is dead. Back in Australia, on an earlier investigation, Billie had accidentally uncovered part of the ODESSA network. This had nothing to do with the Black Sea port, but was an acronym for Organisation Der Ehemaligen Ss-angehörigen, a highly secret group dedicated to smuggling as many former SS men out from under the noses of the Allies as possible. The encounter pitted Billie against one of the most vicious former Nazis in the organisation. She brought about his downfall, but ODESSA have neither forgotten nor forgiven.

Billie is an admirably resilient and resourceful investigator, and Tara Moss tells a tale that gallops along at a cracking pace, and includes a very cinematic scene where Billie fights for her life on very rickety scaffolding high up on the wall of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris, with Le Stryge (above) gazing impassively at the struggle. The Ghosts of Paris is published by Dutton (an imprint of the Penguin Group) and is available now.

Loved the strong female heroine, the dual timeline and a the suspense of having a PI for the character. I only wish I would have known it was the second in a series.

Content warnings: war, torture, MIA soldiers, sexism, homophobia, blackmail, child pornographer, extramarital affair

Business is booming for PI Billie Walker after her high-profile case in the first book in the series. A new client comes into her office looking for her husband, who has been missing for two years. This resonates with Billie, whose war photographer husband has been missing since World War II. Even though Billie tells the client that she only searches for people in Australia, Mrs. Montgomery says she will pay double Billie's daily rate to look for him in Paris and London -- the last places the man was seen alive.

Billie accepts the job and travels to London and Paris with her assistant. While she's there looking for Mr. Montgomery, she's also looking for clues about her husband's whereabouts. The dual investigations lead to conclusions the reader may not expect, and ones Billie definitely doesn't see coming.

Tara Moss uses the slang and fashion of the era to paint vivid portraits of post-WWII Australia, France, and England. One distracting oddity is that the main character is referred to by her full name, "Billie Walker," at the beginning of most chapters. This is jarring to a reader who already knows the character's identity. Moss also uses the word "fag" repeatedly to refer to cigarettes.

Recommended for fans of historical mysteries and the Billie Walker series.

Representation: post-WWII female with a career, historical accounts of gay men

This has been my first historical fiction novel read of 2022 and it was brilliant. This was my first Tara Moss novel and I truly enjoy her writing style and the depth of detail she goes into for her characters, the style, and the time period. If you enjoy the essence of mystery and World War II time frame, I think you will really enjoy this. I can appreciate how much research must have gone in to make this as accurate as possible.

Investigator Billie Walker is tasked with locating a missing husband of a wealthy well-off woman, and ironically her husband has also been missing for quite some time. The way the author moves between the locations of England, France and Australia while giving us indications of what was encountered in those places at that time is insightful.

Billie Walker is such a dynamic female lead in this novel and makes me feel like Nancy Drew and Veronica Mars would look up to her as a role model for female investigators going against the grain.

I will undoubtedly be going back to read The War Widow which is the first Billie Walker novel.

This book was a little outside the norm for what I usually read but I did really enjoy it.

Billie was an excellent, strong, capable mfc. The story takes place post World War II and she does her job amazingly well given the ridiculous expectations placed on women at this time.

I enjoyed her relationship with Sam. He was so sweet. I'd be interested to read future books in this series to see if their relationship progresses.

The story did feel a bit slow in the beginning but definitely picked up once they got to Paris. The storyline with Jack was the one that kept me most interested. I found myself flying through the last half of the book wanting to know what happened.

This is my second book by Tara Moss and I enjoyed it as much as the first.
The main character , Billie Walker, a private investigator is working a case which takes her to Paris and exposes some of her past and her missing husband. Historical fiction and mystery make this a great read.
Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

From my blog: Always With a Book

This is the second book in Tara Moss’s Billie Walker series and I have been so excited for this book! I loved the first book, The War Widow, and I think this second book was a great follow-up! If you love historical mysteries, this series is definitely for you!

Billie Walker is just such an engaging, fun character and I loved being back with her. This time around, Billie and Sam are hired by a rather wealthy woman to find her husband who has been missing. He travelled to London and Paris two years ago and hasn’t been since. This trip is quite fortuitous for Billie as it means she will be able to do a little digging into her own missing person – that of her husband, who never returned after the war.

This book captivated me from the start. I loved that it tackled some pretty interesting topics – topics I never saw coming, but are all too timely even in today’s world. I also loved seeing how life was after the war, not only in Sydney, but also in London and Paris. Billie is such a force and even when there are those that are out to stop her from getting the answers she is after, she doesn’t let it deter her.

I so enjoyed this latest installment and I do hope we see more of Billie. I’m not quite ready to let go of her yet!

The Ghosts of Paris - Tara Moss
Billie Walker is a woman well ahead of her time in 1947. The second World War has ended, and as everyone is rebuilding, Billie has taken over her father's business as a popular Investigator at home in Australia. She typically deals with scorned women, but when Vera walks into her office, she knows it's not quite her typical case.
Vera's husband went on a work trip and hasn't been heard from in two years. Vera hires Billie and her assistant Sam to head to London and Paris in hope that's they'll find him, or bring back his body.
Billie is hesitant at first as all her previous memories of Paris come flooding back. She sees this trip as an opportunity to not only find Vera's husband, but to search for her missing husband Jack as well.
Billie has a reputation that follows her during her hunt. Her and Sam find themselves in danger the closer they get to finding Vera's husband. She has a job to do and will stop at nothing to bring home some answers.
The Ghosts of Paris is a historical fiction that has one of the strongest female leads. As I mentioned, Billie is a woman ahead of her time, ensuring people know she is the boss, not falling to stereotypes of the time. Even though she was searching for her dead husband, I love the chemistry she has with her assistant Sam and may have crossed my fingers for them the whole time. I found this book to be a bit slow, but in the end, I found the book to tell a very meaningful story.
⭐⭐⭐⭐/4
Thank you Netgalley for the ARC!

I really enjoyed the twists and turns of this book! The protagonist was a strong and cunning woman that I loved viewing the unfolding events through. She was great! I also loved all of the small historical details that really made you see the environment as it was in the 1940s.

But I will say, the book w's pace was a bit slow for my taste, especially in the beginning. It really took me some time to get into the story. This is what made the book a 3 star for me but it's overall a good read and great for lovers of historical fiction and mysteries!