Honour Among Ghosts (Sean Williams, A&U)
Honour Among Ghosts is a high-action historical mystery set in a small Irish village where there are sorcerers, moralistic ghosts and spell-scribbling scribes. When 12-year-old Penny’s working-class father is thrown into jail for a burglary he didn’t commit, she is convinced he has been framed. Her best friend Colm, son of the wealthy and prejudiced Magistrate Nightwick (both the sentencer and victim of the robbery), vows to help Penny solve the crime. Enter Mab, a confident and clever magical scribe’s apprentice, and Niclas, a young traveller living on the streets, who join forces with Penny and Colm to try to catch the thief before more innocent townspeople are blamed. With its Victorian-era setting, critique of the class system and sizeable cast of characters sporting some terrifically memorable names, this novel has a distinct Dickensian charm. Williams is a talented writer with a sophisticated and confident prose style. The mystery delivers some satisfying twists and turns, and the story moves at a nimble pace. The novel does begin to feel overly long, however, with the burglaries and thief’s identity being the major focus. A more emotionally powerful story may have emerged if the character backstories and subplots were explored in greater depth. Nonetheless, this is a charming and well-crafted novel for fans of Enola Holmes, the Stella Montgomery series and Neil Gaiman books.
Charlotte Callander is a freelance writer and a bookseller at Antipodes Bookshop and Gallery.
