Essie's job is not for everyone, she clears out the house when people have passed away and there are no known relatives to help. But more than this she is what is called a trauma cleaner, going into a home after the police and forensic staff have finished their job and it's up to her to make the house a home again. When cleaning out an old derelict boarding house she discovers old bones of dead forgotten babies and when the police are informed PC Emily Noble is first to arrive.

Take this book to the beach, pool, garden and enjoy it! Just make sure you wear plenty of SPF as you will lose track of time as you read this! This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

3.5/5.

I loved this book- one of the best examples of sense of place I’ve read. I felt like I could breathe in the Portobello sea air at times.

I liked that there were hints but, like a scab being slowly picked at, all wasn’t revealed at once.

An usual approach to a crime novel. I’ve not read this author’s work before but would be keen to read more!

Emily Noble's Disgrace by Mary Paulson- Ellis feels very much like a book of two halves. In the first half of the book we meet Essie Pound, a trauma cleaner who is sent on a job clearing out a house following the discovery of the desiccated remains of its owner. While there she makes a gruesome discovery that results in her crossing paths with the Emily Noble of the title, a police officer who is determined to solve the mystery for her own reasons. Emily is the narrator of the second half of the book, and it soon becomes clear that the two women are connected by more than just this case and as fragments of their pasts are revealed as the story unfolds , the full truth of the trauma that binds them will shock the reader.
This book is definitely slower paced , especially in the first half , but it does pick up and comes together well in the end. I loved the setting and thought the author did an exceptional job of brining Edinburgh to life. I also liked how she slowly built the characters, revealing more about them as we learn about their pasts.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher , all opinions are my own.

This is the third in a Mary Paulson Ellis’ series of books about people who die without leaving any heirs to deal with the estate. You can absolutely read this as a stand-alone.

Emily Noble’s Disgrace is a beautifully written, deep dive into the history of a house and the objects that mattered to the people who have lived in it. It is an oft times sad story about families and relationships and the secrets they hide as well as the lies they tell.

It is also the story of Essie, a trauma cleaner and Emily, a Police Constable. Told in an almost leisurely fashion, this time shifting book takes its own time to reveal what has really gone on in this now decrepit house in Portobello where the owner, Isabella Dawson has just died. Well, I say just – in fact she has been dead for a while, but her body has only recently been discovered.

Isabella was a hoarder and it is up to Essie and her colleagues from the trauma scene cleaning team to clear and clean the house to make it ready for whatever is to happen to it next.

Emily is a lonely creature, not liked by her colleagues. She is hiding from her past – keeping it locked away in a box in her mind, never once turning the key. Essie is very different. She is desperate to find out more about her own past but all she is given is a big, fat, heavily redacted file which tells her next to nothing.

For both them, visiting this house in the course of their respective duties, they will find things to trouble them and things to awaken those long buried memories – or at least fragments of them.

Shifting back and forwards in history, Mary Paulson Ellis has crafted an intense and pulsing set of mysteries which touch on moments of real trauma and heartbreak. Through it all, the house in Portobello slowly gives up its secrets as we find the stories from the booming days of Portobello as a much loved seaside town to the grimmer times when folk wanted to go further afield and poor old Porty just fell out of fashion.

If you have read the other books in this group, you will find some familiar characters referred to, but it’s not necessary, as no prior knowledge of them is required. I did, though, giggle at the names of the owners of the cleaning company.

At times quite a discomfiting read, there is an uncomfortable series of truths to be found in these pages and Paulson Ellis draws them out as if they were silk stockings coming out the packet for the first time. Some characters stand out as bright and electric; others are more shaded as their secrets have yet to be divulged, but together they present a compelling and interesting story with a heart of darkness that touches the core.

Verdict: This is a house where strange and frightening events have taken place and Mary Paulson Ellis makes her gothic story pulsate with life as she leads us into the dark and dusty interiors of the fly encrusted dwelling. Sometimes a difficult read because of the emotional impact, the prose is beguiling and I really liked it.

Not what I expected but I really enjoyed this tale of lost families, haunting pasts and painful secrets. The story unfolds slowly but its masterfully crafted structure jumping between different timelines and the dark secret at the core of it make for a really compelling reading experience.

This book is completely different to anything else on the book market right now.
Essie's job is not for everyone, she clears out house's when people have passed away and there is no known relatives to help.
But more than this she is what is called a trauma cleaner, going into a home after the police and forensic staff have finished their job and it's up to her to make the house a home again.
When cleaning out an old derelict boarding house she discovers old bones of dead forgotten babies and when the police are informed PC Emily Noble is first to arrive.
What they discover between them is both hope and loss for both of them.

I greatly enjoyed this author's first novel The Other Mrs Walker and this story is linked by the profession of one of the main characters, Essie. Essie is employed to clean up following the death of a person with no known next of kin.

With Isabelle Dawson dead for over two years in the boarding hose at Portobello, Edinburgh, there are secrets to be uncovered.

I started off really enjoying peeking inside this house with its distinct air of hidden secrets but I'm afraid that I fell distinctly out of love in the middle section which was a great shame because the last few chapters had me sat up and fully paying attention.

Thanks to the author, publishers and Net Galley for my free e-copy.

This is a story based in a seaside town near Edinburgh. It follows 3 different main characters, all women, who seem at the beginning to be unconnected. One works in a cleaning company who clear up amongst other things dead people, another is a police officer with a past and the last is the owner of a boarding house with a history.

We are drip fed information as the book progresses and you begin to find out how people may be linked.

I found this quite a different and interesting book as it goes back in time, from the present to the 1920's. I did find the writing style quite different with an interesting flow.

I did sometimes struggle to connect the characters and past events as it does jump in time and some of the narrators are quite unreliable so I found in parts hard to tell what was real and what wasn't.

Overall I did enjoy this book and liked the different eras and setting so would give a 3.5 rather than a 3 if I could.

Mary Paulson-Ellis is a brand new author for me so I had no expectations going into the book, other than the excitement the blurb and other reviews alluded to.

This is quite a hard book to read with a number of triggers such as child death, fat phobia, decomposition, mental health, and hoarding. It is upsetting and unsettling and uneasy. It’s exciting and electric, raw and truthful and unashamed,

This book is full of short chapters which I prefer. I think they make for a more pleasant read. There is a lot of description which I don’t always like but it feels necessary in this as it is painting us this unsettling picture.

For me, not much actually happened as far as plot points go, it’s more a story about the main character and her inner feelings. It’s very much a character-driven story rather than plot-driven, in my opinion.

A couple of slightly negative points: I did find the first part a little repetitive and slow, but this did soon pick up. It’s also quite metaphor heavy. At first I didn’t mind this but I felt there were so many it lifted me out of the story on occasion.

It’s important to know, I think, that the Emily Noble in question doesn’t actually appear until chapter 38, so be prepared to have your focus on a number of other characters. It does flit between time zones and the timers are entwined which took me a little while to get my head round, but once you accept that, you can keep track of it.

I did get slightly lost at points, but I found the last few chapters really rounded everything up neatly, and definitely unexpectedly.

A really clever construction of a tale - leaping about in time and speeding up the flashbacks as the book rushes towards its conclusion. The three parts of the book are from different points of view, with us discovering first Essie and then Emily. Neither are particularly likeable characters and yet as the book progresses the author paints all of their issues in a patient light and you do want them to have a happier ending. The ending is brilliant and unlocks the rest of the book, even though I didn’t even know that I was waiting for the dénûment, it crashed over me and suddenly the book fell into perspective.

Read through netgalley,
I really enjoyed this and it’s blurb didn’t do it justice. It’s the story that starts when an old lady dies with no heir to sort out her estate.

It was quite confusing in some places meaning I had to go back a bit to try to work it out but would still recommend.

Emily Noble's Disgrace is a book about history, reputation and families. The two main characters, Emily and Essie dominate the storyline, along with the owner of the boarding house in Portobello, Edinburgh who acts as a lynchpin to the story. This isn't a book for those who can't read about trauma. Its brutal at times, and quite difficult to follow at others. Not one of my favourite reads, although I did finish it!
With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in return for an honest review,

Thanks to Pan Macmillan and NetGalley for the ARC.

I'm not sure where to start - this is utterly beguiling, beatifully constructed and heartbreaking in turns.

Reputation is everything.

Essie Pound is a specialist trauma cleaner, working in an old boarding house in Portobello, Edinburgh's once faded seaside resort, now gentrifying at a rate of knots. She discovers some items in the house that allow her to uncover hidden truths, about Mrs Dawson the elderly, long deceased owner, and about her own life.
Emily Noble is a detective constable, recently humiliated by a colleague and feeling a laughing stock. She makes a gruesome discovery on Portobello beach that brings her to the back gate of the old boarding house, and on the brink of disturbing memories of her own.
The writer weaves the narrative between modern timelines and the past, bringing to life a host of remarkable characters from Edinburgh past and present. There is a dreamlike quality to the writing and a sense that tragedy is ahead, as well as just behind.

As gorgeous as an old silk kimono.

A strange compelling tale of lost souls, lost histories, lost families, that is very dark. Those poor motherless girls and the childless mothers and people lying dead for months could be beyond reading but this is a complex, woven tale that slowly unfolds and there is some redemption.

A guesthouse on Edinburgh's waterfront, in Portobello, provides us with the backdrop for this novel. We follow it's decline, over a century, from genteel to dilapidated. It was managed over that entire period by a mother and her daughter in law . The latter being found dead in her bed, where her body had lain undiscovered for 2 years. Paulson- Ellis interweaves this story with a tragic incident that happened in a house further along the same promenade 25 years previously. The survivors of this latter tragedy happen to meet up again as a result of their involvement in the clear-out and subsequent police investigation required at the guesthouse.
It's certainly not a simple plot nor is it a story for the faint-hearted - elements of it are truly gruesome. Does Paulson-Ellis pull it off? Not quite, is my opinion. I much preferred her previous book "The Inheritance of Solomon Farthing". In this novel there was also a plot involving time-shift, but somehow it read more fluently and felt less constructed.
However, Paulson-Ellis again displays the ability to give a wonderful dimension and depth to her characters and also her use of words ,to create vivid imagery of the world they inhabit, is exceptional. So this book definitely has its qualities, but, I find myself unable to rate it a "must read".

I felt really bereft after finishing this book. This book made me fall in love with Edinburgh or more accurately Portobello. The book feels like a homage to this part of Edinburgh and how it used to be and it made me sad that I’ll never see it in all its glory but at least I can imagine it now. The location is definitely a big part of this story and plays its role so well. The author is a master storyteller, the way she weaves the story together, and brings characters to life is perfect. Her characters all feel so alive and real it makes it so easy to see them and believe in them. I’ve read all her books now and although they are all standalone novels you’ll always meet some familiar characters along the way.

Like Paulson-Ellis’s previous novels this centres around the death of someone without known relatives in Edinburgh providing a task for the Office for Lost People to deal with the mess they’ve left behind. With the help of heir hunters such as Solomon Farthing and in this instance a cleaning company who clear and clean the mess they’ve left behind whilst looking for clues which can help the search. Some people will hate the slow pace and lack of clear cut answers to all of the mystery but I absolutely love them and the way the characters unravel the mystery and come together. For me this was the best of her three novels, although the cameo appearances of previous characters, reminiscent of the works of Mary Wesley, made me want to go back and re-read the others to remind me what had happened to them before. A wonderful read.

The first two parts of this book were definitely my favourites,being drawn into the story,and picking up the clues as to connections.
Also,I was fascinated my the idea of trauma cleaners,and spent too much time.e wondering what anyone might find,and do with my things when I'm gone.
Strangely the last parts held my attention less.... Still enjoyable,but just not so much.
An engaging read even so.

Mary's books are not your fast-paced, action packed mysteries; they are thoughtful, well structured and with wonderfully deep characters and story lines. Sadly tragic yet hopeful at the same time.
The Other Mrs Walker, and The Inheritance of Solomon Farthing precede this book however you don't need to have read them at all as each of them stand alone, yet having read them in order does give the reader a bit more background to some of the main characters and their history.
The unusual idea of setting these books about 'trauma cleaners' is such a clever way to write a mystery around death without the normal police or detective setting.

Such an unusual storyline, wonderfully engineered to create an immensely enjoyable read. Characters who leap from the page and beautifully chosen language - fabulous!