I didn't think this installment was as appealing as some of the others I have read in the series (I really need to go back and read all the ones in order that I have missed, since I'm fairly new to Victoria Thompson).
There wasn't as much interaction between the leading characters, the husband and wife investigating team of former policeman Frank and midwife Sarah, or with their employees Maeve and Gino, though Maeve played a large part in the story, which was a plus. I also didn't get quite as much of the period flavor as in others in the series.
What made it interesting (and actually important) was the novel's focus on mental illness, how it was recognized, and treated, in the early twentieth century. The stigma of mental illness was even more profound then than it is now. It leads to the question: how much have we progressed, or not, in treating people with serious conditions that could lead them to hurting themselves or others, as occurred in this book? The answer, I think, is not as much as we should have. While large municipal and state-run institutions that housed patients often in appalling and prison-like conditions have largely been abolished and destroyed, we now lack enough facilities or practitioners who can care for people who are suffering, untreated, and often living homeless in the streets of our cities. That is as far from humane as can be, and fallout from COVID exacerbated the numbers of people who need treatment. Perhaps that was Thompson's impetus for this book, and I do recommend it for that reason.
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