Book Review: Murder at Merewood Hospital by Michelle Salter

I’m pleased to be welcoming Michelle Salter back to Novel Kicks. She’s here with the blog tour for her latest novel, Murder at Merewood Hospital.

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 Merewood Manor. 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..?

*****

World War One has ended and soon the temporary hospital at Merewood Farm will have to close.

Nurse Helen Hopgood wants to make sure that the injured servicemen that remain in the ward have been moved and are OK, However, someone else has other plans and soon one of her patients is murdered. With everyone seemingly under suspicion, can the perpetrator be found before someone else gets hurt?

I’n such a big fan of Michelle Salter. I was not only excited at the release of this new mystery but was very happy to be part of the blog tour around its release.

Having enjoyed the Iris Woodmore series, I wondered what this brand new historical mystery would be like and whether I’d like it as much as Iris’s adventures. I need not have worried.

Michelle Salter has a skill of drawing you into her stories. She sets the scene well and I felt like I was at this hospital at the end of the war. I could see the building and the woods so vividly in my head.

Helen is a great protagonist. You can tell she takes her job seriously and although she accepts that the hospital must close, she cares what happens to the patients who are left. She was easy to like. In fact, she was the only one I didn’t suspect as being the potential Murderer.

Doubts are cast on everyone else and I found the ending surprising as it could have been any one of them. I had to keep reading. I needed to know who the culprit was. Suspicion, doubt and tension are weaved in really well. I felt so sorry for the servicemen in this novel. To go through the war and then end up in the path of someone who will quite happily kill them. It made me sad.

As with all of the mysteries I review, there’s not a lot more I can say without spoilers. If you like your historical settings with a good puzzle to solve, then this book is perfect. I really enjoyed it and I throughly recommend it.

(Thank you to Boldwood Books, Netgalley and Rachel’s Random Resources for an advanced reading copy in exchange for an honest review.) 

About Michelle Salter –

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. 

Murder at Merewood Hospital was released by Boldwood Books on 14th January 2024. Click to buy on Amazon UK and Waterstones. 

Say hello to Michelle via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Bookbub. Click here to sign up to her newsletter. 

by

Laura

I’m Laura. I started Novel Kicks in 2009. I wanted a place to post my writing as well as give other writers like me the opportunity to do the same. There is also a monthly book club, a writing room which features writing prompts, book reviews, competitions, author interviews and guest posts.

I grew up by the sea (my favourite place in the world) and I currently live in Hampshire. I am married to Chris, have a cat named Buddy and I would love to be a writer. I’m trying to write the novel I’ve talked so much about writing if only I could stop pressing delete. I’ve loved writing since creative writing classes in primary school. I have always wanted to see my teacher Miss Sayers again and thank her for the encouragement. When not trying to write the novel or writing snippets of stories on anything I can get my hands on, I love reading, dancing like a loon and singing to myself very badly. My current obsession is Once Upon a Time and I would be happy to live with magic in the enchanted forest surrounded by all those wonderful stories provided that world also included Harry Potter. I love reading chick lit. contemporary fiction and novels with mystery.