Rachel Smith's Blog: Guinea Pigs and Books, page 18

“Chilling Charnel Chatter”

90. When the Dogs Don’t Bark: A Forensic Scientist’s Search for the Truth – Prof. Angela Gallop

As much as I like reading about what could be considered the tedious parts of crime solving and work in general, I did not expect there to be so much business in here. Not crime business, starting a company business. This could easily guide anyone who was thinking about getting into forensics along with some questions they may have about how to sort out their own facility and what kinds of questions they shouldn’t forget to ask. Unfortunately, these are not at all my questions so this read as quite dry in rather substantial portions.

It also read as quite emotionally dry, but in my opinion that’s par for the course when you’re dealing with the minutiae of the worst of what people can do to each other alongside a system that doesn’t always work at all or in favor of those most hurt by the crimes. And especially if you’re working as a woman in a time period when it was totally okay to be a misogynist in the workplace, whether it was a crime scene or a lab or not. Super tough situations all around.

My overall opinion is that this was the most practical version of this type of book one could read. So very practical and methodical that I’m not surprised the author is well-known in her field and not someone who reads like they’re trying too hard to be a memoirist because they got sidetracked by a very important job.

 

With a name like Murderface, she knows she couldn’t name her burgeoning forensics company after herself. They’ll have to name it after Pickles. Yep.

Quite a team.

29. The Devil Rides Out – Dennis Wheatley

The Hammer movie, while close enough to the book, leaves out some interesting pieces of this story – like that Rex is from the US and the kid’s name is actually Fleur and not Peggy. Sheesh. I could not stop myself from picturing Christopher Lee as the Duke de Richleau though, it suits him so well to be the guy who knows what’s up and how to deal with it, but is also vulnerable at times while staying stoic, so very well. So well. Also, Mocata in the movie looks way different and Tanith isn’t from the UK either in the book, it was more of an international cast of characters all around, whereas the Hammer movie is homogenized by comparison in terms of both the cast and the locations. The romance between Rex and Tanith is a bit less meet-cute too, as in, they almost had meet cutes on a couple continents before meeting at the weird Satanists party and later going dress shopping in London for Walpurgisnacht.

I expected to have a harder time getting into this book than I did. This book does have some outdated descriptive language for people, which is not terribly surprising since the copyright date is 1934, but for the most part it reads without much impediment and they really pay a lot of attention to details about the wines, which still didn’t really slow the story down. You see, the Duke de Richleau has enough cars to keep everybody dashing around to try and save Simon from his unfortunate Satanic dabbling that he thought was just to help him financially stay stable while the market does what it does. “Ner,” as he would repeatedly say, is what he should have said to that to begin with. Rex and the Duke and Simon are all good buddies. Buddies who can save each other with their money, cunning, and physical skills – I’m not entirely sure what Simon’s skills were supposed to be though, he’s like the lovable scamp they won’t let go of.

 

Salem demonstrates how comfortable one can be around their buddies. Granted, his are stuffed, but they’re also not hypnotizing him into dabbling in Satanic worship. Ner, they are not.

“If it’s a severed head, I’m going to be very upset.”

The Chalk Man – C.J. Tudor

A group of kids who sort of maybe do really like each other growing up in the 1980s and dealing with the repercussions of the events of one summer is classic territory for novelists, whether it’s in the US or 1986 in Anderbury, England as it is in The Chalk Man. One thing here that’s covered better in my opinion is whether or not all the kids really do like each other, really are bonded thick as thieves (or just the one thief, the narrator), or if there are consistent fault lines between them caused by their families and also their own behavior.

The Chalk Man involves some areas that I don’t usually see covered in the nostalgia territory which are somewhat more sinister without having verified supernatural creatures like Pennywise involved, like who poisoned the poor sweet dog, rampant bullying, a group responsible for calling a doctor a baby killer via a fetal pig package, a serious car accident that may have been drug induced, that one kid who won’t stop doing accents, and more.

A bit of spoilers here: I expected the titular Chalk Man himself to turn out a little differently because the narrator did give him some suspicious sounding elements and obviously he was posthumously accused of murder and turned up to haunt the narrator once as a ghost. However, he truly wasn’t the worst character in the story and his grey area of being in love with a much younger woman who wasn’t a minor is way more traditional than “I found a murder victim and I took her severed head, even though I didn’t murder her.”

 

So… you need help with a kid who won’t stop doing accents? Finny knows a well-timed tooth snap can really let someone know they need to stop doing something.

 

Just a little bit of flesh sewing

8. The House on Vesper Sands – Paraic O’Donnell

A bit of an old school Gothic mystery, a seamstress who has been locked into the attic by her employer to complete something to aid him in his nefarious ends jumps out of the window… so that the police and the medical examiner can get on figuring everything out. It, of course, leads them and female reporter and 19th century maverick Octavia Hillingdon an unfortunate mansion of rich people in a dwindling family and one of their secret society thingies that of course needs underclass fuel to work. Octavia, the person sucked into the mystery because he’s searching for loved ones in London – Gideon Bliss, and Inspector Cutter, whose name is really appropriate for his tone, are all fun characters to follow around even if the mystery they’re solving has unsorted out supernatural elements and is kind of conventional.

 

When I think 1893 maverick lady reporter in London, I think Pammy. She would look effectively haughty and determined on bicycle or off.

“See the deterioration? I’m a victim of the electronic age.”

22. Ghoster – Jason Arnopp

Kate, social media addict and paramedic who seems to take a lot of pills, goes out with a guy named Scott who she meets at technology detox. Scott seems just a little bit too good to be true, because he is, and she ends up ignoring several red flags that people tend to ignore when they think a good thing is happening… Anyway, dude completely disappears after they decide to move in together and is like really, truly, madly, deeply missing. And Kate has nowhere to go now. She gave up her life for a Scott she barely knew. Although, he did leave his phone in the apartment which has some very scary features like demony scratches and a scary face in the window and then she starts getting calls on Scott’s phone.

So, I really liked The Last Days of Jack Sparks and I was willing to put up with this one for the 497 pages it takes up, but I did not find it overly satisfying. I believe all my talk about libraries and newspapers on microfilm is probably a clue about where I like my research scenes to take place and how I like to learn about hauntings. Ghoster, with a title coming from social media habits and rude things people do like not use the library, was like all social media and on the phone, very ugh for me. It’s decent enough but does not have the crackle of Jack Sparks by any means. Kate in particular feels manipulated by plot needs instead of like a real lady human, which is a definite issue if we’re to trust her to solve even cell phone mysteries.

 

Mortemer can rest easy knowing he will never need to solve a mystery using only a cell phone and rather contrived dialogue.

 

We’re lost, so we must argue.

81. The Dark Between the Trees – Fiona Barnett

Moresby Wood is a place now surrounded by fencing with a haunted history that includes Roundhead disappearances, a family that disappeared and whose teen daughter was rumored to have become a witch, and a beast that has scared people since before Christianity came to England. So, of course, there are academics who want to get their hands on it when their research curiosity can no longer be satisfied without going in. Dr. Alice Christopher, who is obsessed with all the legends and what’s really -maybe- going on in there, especially with regard to the disappearance of one particular party of soldiers who were ambushed and fled into the forest with only one deserter returning. That deserter is where the best account of what’s going on in the woods came from besides local legends that tend to change over time.

I enjoyed this story for the most part, it had a classic era, or the classic era, for British folk horror stories – the English Civil War, and so I essentially pictured all the soldiers except the blowhard Thatcher (quite the name choice for invocation) essentially as the ones from Witchfinder General, like Nicky Henson’s Swallow more so than Ian Ogilvy’s Richard, they’re a bit more cautious and functional than gallant. And some of them are just plain scared. This is paralleled with the expedition looking for those same soldiers of academics and park rangers, which reminded me of The Descent with the deception of Juno and the descending into this is not going to work out well arguments and bickering. I mean, they both have arguments and bickering, but the group of women do not also have guns and old superstition, at least some of them are trying to convince themselves they aren’t superstitious and that’s not why they’re freaking out about how wrong these woods are.

I can’t say I enjoyed the ending, although that also reminded me of The Descent. There’s the confusing ending and the escapist ending and either way it just doesn’t seem to end well, but I think that split worked better in The Descent because here it’s two different members of the party and it just ended up unsatisfying. But before getting stuck with that ending, I was very keen to figure out what was going on and continue reading.

 

Hen Wen looks for Roundheads in the fake couch forest. It’s a little easier to get out of, but they might be there behind the fake caribou, you never know.

“They wonder where, they wonder when, they know how.”

18. The Stigma – Trevor Hoyle

Regression therapy, Branwell Bronte, a giant black dog who will not shut up about how it wants to fornicate…all of these things are big parts of The Stigma. I also took a long time to understand what the title meant despite having read enough about witch hunts to know better; it seems the concept of being stigmatized for more figurative things than those “fleshie teats,” to borrow from a later witch hunting pamphlet, was too ingrained in me. And, due to educational choices, I have heard of this particular witch trial in person at the very castle the Lancashire witches were hanged at. It’s still a prison in addition to having a museum and being a castle directly in the middle of town. It’s on a big hill too.

Anyway, Alizon Davies will not be denied. She had eyes going two directions, which somehow helped her be so confusing to people that she had to be accused of witchcraft and was a real witch too. Her familiar was a giant black dog named Tibb, who talks – mostly about fornicating to women who do not want to fornicate with a giant demon in the shape of a dog – and she wants to live forever and has the skills. What she does not have is the cooperation of all her descendants. Elizabeth Strang’s father, Greville, was not cooperative, but we don’t learn that till later. Mostly we have Elizabeth, who seems depressed and has nightmares we know are real, and her psychiatrist, Quinton, and at first I was worried this book was not going to get going like ever.

It does take off, finally, it seems it takes a minute for a witch from 1612 to get her strength going so she can kill people and give her dog a chance to threaten women before quite the ending. Like, seriously, the resolution to Elizabeth’s ancestory was really something.

 

Peregrine definitely had certain skills; unfortunately, living forever wasn’t one of them. If only she’d leaned in to being a pigtch early on.

The Unconnected Twins

153. April’s Grave – Susan Howatch

Usually in novels and movies, twins know when something has happened to the other one. There’s like a psychic connection represented. But here, that doesn’t happen. So Karen doesn’t realize that her twin sister April must be dead until three years later when she returns to everything she was doing in her life then, like Neville who did have an affair with April, in Scotland at the croft she and Neville broke up at because he was having said affair with April.

Karen and April are from the USA and so is their brother Thomas, which leads to judgements from Neville’s sister Leonie, who has had to keep house for him like the whole time and take care of his kid, who they call Snuff, and be a general drudge. Leonie also has a crush on Neville’s tree business partner Marney. I’d say she’s bearing a torch, but, that would burn things like trees. Anyway, Neville is too busy having affairs and being a man about town as a lecturer in botany to be bothered with keeping his own house. He’s the kind of guy who totally owns all those party records they made in the 1960s and keeps them next to a well stocked bar at every house he owns, London or Scotland, at all times. Even though he has a kid.

He even has had an affair that seems kind of manipulated with Karen’s best friend in London, Melissa. So, when Karen wants to come back and see Snuff and probably get back into it with Neville, Melissa is sure to let Karen know that she can stay with her and oh, by the way, she’s been the one in Neville’s life, but they’re totally breaking up. Melissa does not want to break up and she wants to hurt Karen for getting what she can’t. Even though Karen’s own sister has already been there.

Anyway, it’s a tangled web of not realizing things and the best characters are Thomas, who is kind of disliked but very forthright (American), and Snuff, who is young enough to not be involved. Karen seems to be overwhelmed by running back to the life she left and I don’t know why she thinks Neville is suddenly going to be a good dude to be married to – oh, right, they never got divorced – when she also thinks he might have murdered her twin sister. If they could only find that body.

After a lot of discussion about not calling the police because of how it would be bad for several of them to appear like a murderer, the police are called and guess who finds April’s Grave? They do because they’re not stuck having all kinds of dramatic discussions about it.

 

Snuffy, who occasionally goes by Snuffs or Snuffkin or her real first name (rarely) which isn’t Snuff, and Wisting are not looking for a body on the couch, but they’re also not not looking for a body on the couch.

“Sorry I dropped something, I didn’t catch what you said.”

12. The Loney – Andrew Michael Hurley

There are sometimes books I encounter that I would like to enjoy, but something prevents me. I just did not get much out of this one. I like folk horror a lot, I like animal masks and creepy traditions in small towns, I like that in England, and I like Lancashire as I did go to school there for my MA. However, that is not enough to get into The Loney because despite all these things existing in it and a creepy house with a former taxidermist owner and other gothic traditional elements, I did not understand what was going on. I don’t have any background in Catholicism, so maybe the whole Catholic pilgrimage thing and belief that somehow this one location is going to cure a child’s muteness is where it lost me, but I don’t really think so. I read one review that made a big deal of what is not said and I don’t think that’s a good thing in this one. The whole point of a book is to evoke something and tell a story using words that are strong enough.

I think there was an atmosphere here, but the images in my head when I was reading weren’t working towards a mood or anything functional either in the end. I’ve read books where I know what’s unsaid works as an important aspect because the other words those authors were using were strong enough to evoke an image that made sense and added to the story. The Loney didn’t work that way in my reading. To be fair, “Mummer,” as the mom is referred to, didn’t say much either, she just seemed super uptight and unfailing in her faith. Maybe her severe level of discomfort is what the reader is supposed to feel or just the severe level of discomfort she causes others to feel because she’s definitely that lady who judges in silence and small noises. That came through, but other levels of non-parental dread and a clear story with dread did not.

 

Pammy and Twiglet taking a nap in the face of gothic dread, as usual. If they don’t get it, they don’t get it, but they do get a nap.

Renting country houses without a mysterious past occupant is super difficult.

3. Quickthorn – Lanora Miller

Susan Copeland is a US lady moving to a small village in England because her new husband Alec has an important government job that requires him to be in England for at least a year. He also has a past that involves the mysterious woman whose house Susan just rented…Fiona. Fiona is very intriguing to so many in the village and so Susan gets to experience weird visitations from Hugh, who is still in love with Fiona and also trying to break into the loft where her stuff is stored, and someone who tries to essentially take Susan out real quick. This is not just because she’s from the US and renting/invading the village. It actually seems like a mostly welcoming place, which is suspicious in a Gothic. At least one of her neighbors is resolutely icy and unwelcoming enough to make sense. And it seems like nobody liked Fiona besides Hugh and apparently Susan’s husband back in the day, which leads Susan to some foul moods and also investigating in London.

Susan does her best to get along with those she meets and she finds that there was an archaeological excavation being started behind her house for Roman artifacts that was semi-abandoned because of Fiona. Susan is interested in archaeology and invites the dig to begin again, not realizing that will invite some burying as well.

 

Ozma knows being mysterious and intriguing is a tough business, especially when friends like Horace keep sniffing around your excavation pit.