Rachel Smith's Blog: Guinea Pigs and Books, page 19

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.

“Give me a treat, my soul is on the floor.”

16. The Wine of Angels – Phil Rickman

So…I was told Merrily Watkins, vicar of the Merrily Watkins series, was an exorcist, so I kept waiting for someone to be truly possessed in this, the first of the series. Nobody’s possessed exactly, haunted, but not possessed, and it’s Merrily.

Merrily and her teenage daughter Jane are assigned to the village of Lewardine right when the village is in some turmoil about new vs. old, which folklore is most important, which traditions should be thrown out and burned, that sort of thing. Will anyone accept a female priest in a super historically bent village? The main question for that is really, does the priest like apples? Cider? The apples here are very serious. Very.

As usual, Phil Rickman’s mystery encompasses all kinds around the village and the historical poets who influenced the way the village is now. Also as usual from what I’ve read, legends like Thomas Traherne and Nick Drake light the way to solving an ancient mystery that’s attached itself to Merrily like the little goblin dude who plays the organ (he was gross, but also not possessed).

 

Merri and Pere liked a little piece of apple now and again, but they weren’t too concerned about village secrets and definitely would have accepted a lady priest in charge since both Merricat and Peregrine went on to be herd queens.

The Hellripper song about Demdike rules.

155. The Daylight Gate – Jeanette Winterson

The Lancashire witch trials precede one Witchfinder General I tend to talk about by several years. They, however, follow the tumultuous time of trying to succeed Elizabeth I and James I being all, “I am the king and I wrote about Demonology, go forth and root it out.” And he wrote that because he got mad about a storm and had some women killed in Scotland for “plotting against him,” these would be known as the North Berwick witches. Anyway, people like Thomas Potts in this novel (and in real life, he wrote his own book about it) take James I up on that and go after poor women, ones who aren’t appealing for maybe being Catholic, and then any upstart know it alls who point things out to them like Alice Nutter. She has money, in this story she also has a level of magic that is borne of a relationship with Dr. John Dee and cohorts, and yet, she is made vulnerable by annoying the wrong people and maybe harboring a Catholic part of the Gunpowder Plot whose sister is the only one acquitted from the shitty (literally) dungeon hole in Lancaster Castle. As mentioned previously, I have seen this place and it had been cleaned probably several times since the 1600s, but was still quite depressing.

The liberties taken with what might have been actually going on in Lancaster during this time are very entertaining and put an emotional point on the story and the desolate conditions of the time. One particular historical liberty is taken with Old Demdike that even as one with exes who didn’t try to substitute my soul for theirs in a devil’s bargain I still wasn’t quite tracking with, but it was good nonetheless. It gave Alice Nutter a real reason to be so protective of a family that does not come off well no matter their circumstances. So much abuse and grave robbing and just no good future options.

 

Is it Dr. John Dee and Alice Nutter? Nope. Thaddeus and Pickles, not doing alchemy where you could see them as usual.

“While we out here fumbling with that music… the lousy bastard was in there, KILLING HER!”

24. Case with Three Husbands – Margaret Erskine

Bastardy. A word not often used, probably because it has less impact than “bastard” by itself – a fact proven by Linda Day George in the movie Pieces during her pivotal scene of mostly yelling “BAAAAAASTAAARD!” for quite a long time. Pivotal. Anyway though, this whodunit revolves around a family secret and those who know and those who want the family fortune.

There’s the usual cast of eccentric family members, two daughters with ex-husbands, that one hypochondriac guy who swims in the ocean every day, that actor one of the daughters brought home, a lovely poodle who dug up some shoes and started all the controversy. But… there might not have been any kerfuffle or solution if there hadn’t been a doctor living essentially next door who was hosting a recuperating policeman after he’d been shot in London. And actually, the way he got there via a visit to that very doctor’s father where he overheard the daughter with the many supposedly dead husbands.

Eavesdropping, a poodle who dug up shoes in the sand, and Septimus Finch, who has zero ability to relax even after being shot are the pillars of this story. I can’t say I was as concerned about the many probably dead husbands or the violation of the policy about not using the front gate until Edward VIII ditches that American and unabdicates the throne or the “obviously I love my childhood friend who keeps talking about me like I’m a feral cat” romance.

 

Snuffy is about to yell “BAAASTAAARD” at Thorfy, who is definitely not a bastard in any traditional sense of the word or talking about her like she’s feral. She’s far too intimidating for that.

 

Being quiet and still is very hard to master.

127. Her Little Flowers – Shannon Morgan

A very English ghost story taking place in Cumbria. Of course a 500 year old house would have ghosts and of course the 55 year old woman living in it would be nonplussed by them, even count on them for company. I liked Francine. She has a hard time opening up to kindness, she has a super strong way with plants and knows exactly all of what they do thanks to her mother, and she doesn’t like technology. She’s a great ghost story protagonist because she’s a little bit like a ghost herself. She’s also really, really good at being still – as a librarian and very still and quiet person, I completely respect that.

Also, one of the many ghosts Francine counts on to be regularly present in Thwaite Manor is a cat named Tibbles. Bonus points for Tibbles. Pet ghosts are wonderful. Not as wonderful, they also have an abandoned asylum on the property, those ghosts would not be known for their sweet dispositions based on being in an asylum, poor unfortunate souls that they are/were. Francine’s most frequent companion is a ghost named Bree, who runs a lot, disrupts lots of stuff, but is also sweet. She spends a lot of time in a tree and Francine hasn’t been able to figure out exactly why she’s there. A lot of the ghosts would be family as this is the ancestral Thwaite universe, but the Thwaite Histories in their library are from the long long ago and their author isn’t talking, just walking by every night.

Anyway, Francine is also part of the town scandal/mystery that she doesn’t actually remember because she was 5 years old when it happened and she’s got a really big brain lock on it. However, when her sister Madeline’s 34th husband or so dies and Madeline returns to Thwaite Manor and Francine gets a lodger who is interested in her and has plant knowledge to boot, her life is essentially turned upside-down and she has to get out of her comfort zone in about fifty ways. It is unusual to see a 55 year old protagonist who isn’t feeling free and happy to have adventures. I really liked this story for that alone because it’s so damn unusual and Francine’s family saga is both very intriguing and very sad.

 

Twiglet knows a little something about an untimely death and hopefully also about being a protective ghost.

 

“How about you go be immortal at brunch?”

6. The Bog – Michael Talbot

When Brad makes the call to tell Prof. David Macauley they’ve found a bog body in one of the places that Macauley scouted to try and find something exactly as important as a bog body, it will turn the Macauley family’s world upside down. They’ll be moving to unfriendly and downright weird Fenchurch St. Jude and dealing with a marquis and some real old ways and magic. I’m not super keen on magic and magical resolutions. Sometimes it just gets ridiculous, even for horror novels, but here it works out better than I would have expected because Talbot really does manage to tie the magic to the pursuit of knowledge, which definitely would be super tempting for a professor like Macauley looking for his big discovery that will put him on the map. When the person who has to give permission for the excavation is also your landlord and dangling the most knowledge of the past you could ever have in front of you, it’s more of a conundrum.

One thing that feeds into past knowledge and that I also found more enjoyable about The Bog was that it occasionally dips into the actual past when the first bog body they find was being sacrificed. Usually it’s just what can this preserved sacrifice do for the characters or unleash by being removed, not, who is this person in the bog and I also really liked the description of how they can remove the bog body, what is further sacrificed to find more out about the body, and how to still keep it nice and preserved. I want some foundational methods in my bog body story before we get to all the weirdo magic and demon excrement and problems that arise with inbreeding and being scared of moths.

 

Can magical and important artifacts be found in a towel sitting on a bed? Pickles and Murderface will soon know the truth. Soon.

Pervasive dread.

27. No One Gets Out Alive – Adam Nevill

Stephanie’s circumstances are bad and only getting worse. She takes a room on Edgehill Road because it is theoretically cheap enough, even if it comes with a super creepy landlord named Knacker, of all things, and she doesn’t realize the whole “women only” part of the house is an omen of bad things to come, not a safety thing. The other women who live there seem to have a certain profession that maybe benefits Knacker, perhaps, and the ones who cry all night seem to either disappear or…not really be living there in the first place, emphasis on “living.” It’s like Stephanie can hear someone who ended up in a worse situation than she did and because she’s desperate, not stupid, she’s making her best efforts to get out. Knacker and his boy Fergal, will, of course, make that as impossible as possible.

This one reeks with desperation, damp, despair, probably more D-words. Determination. Stephanie is in a bad way financially, but that doesn’t take away her determination to either figure this out or escape, preferably both, even though all help she might get from the outside is really cut off. And there are such seriously disgusting men in front of her trying to push her into becoming a prostitute. It’s hard knowing better and still being stuck, this book really pushes that at the reader and it’s so creepy in that house on its own. The whole house sounds disgusting and like you’d get tetanus living there in seconds. Plus there are upset ghosts who are crying all night. I mean, seriously, when this is the best you can do you know you’re well and truly screwed. She doesn’t even stay 10 days and it feels like for-ev-er. Nevill is really, really good at making the reader feel the atmosphere and it’s so depressing that when it gets more ghosty and also dark in the literal sense, it’s way scarier.

 

You know who had the exact opposite situation of this book? Merricat. She went from whoever let her go to the humane society to being in charge of my entire household. She was determined to be queen and she made it.

“You have one day to leave town peacefully, if not, you can leave in a box.”

113. His & Hers – Alice Feeney

I really like the cover of this book with all the twisty tree branches essentially in silhouette but also crossing the title. I think I like the cover more than I liked the actual novel, which seems to put just a few too many people totally capable of murder within a very small town at once. I mean, I get it, small towns can lead to creativity to break out, but hiding your murderous or just felonious impulses in a small place is way more difficult. And hiding someone else’s just takes so much out of you.

A lot of this takes place in the woods, which goes with the cover and is more entertaining than just going between the pub and home, which seems to be quite the small English village pastime as is totally fine. It’s mainly between the perspectives of Anna Andrews, person who left town but is now forced back from her television job because someone returned from their maternity leave, and Inspector Jack Harper, solver of murders in the woods who definitely knows Anna. It’s interesting enough to keep one’s attention, if a bit unbelievable at the end. Even though I guessed the last twist, I think it was a decent twist. It would have been better if I hadn’t guessed it, but we can’t all gasp, now can we?

 

Horace and Ozma are waiting for their village boar and ladypig mystery to solve. What they haven’t realized is that they should be waiting at the pub, not on the back of a couch in the US. Whoops.

No ghost horses ran anyone over.

69. The Shadowy Horses – Susanna Kearsley

Verity Grey travels to Scotland because her boss is sure he’s found the resting place of the Ninth Roman Legion, who came up from York to become an archeological dig hundreds of years later. Literally their goal. Those Romans. Her boss thinks they’re in this Scottish tiny place because he’s seen one of them walking around. And Verity hears their horses over and over when she gets there. It’s an interesting method of finding artifacts and an interesting dig to go with, including some people of questionable character and motive. Weirdly I’m not referring to the Romans, but they are super dead and the main one is apparently just nostalgic. Verity is a good character and apparently she reminds the ghost Roman of someone important to him so she’s totally getting more haunted than everyone else who sees any ghosts. I did not realize there was also going to be a romance as a story goal, which was okay, but the thing is, usually in stories like this I’m hoping for horror to happen, so I was a little disappointed. I think most readers wouldn’t be and otherwise this was a decent story.

 

Salem is blurry in this photo so he kind of looks like a ghost giving Hen Wen a nosey in their version of outside. The owl is scandalized.

 

“I have always valued my lifelessness.”

121. Corrupt Bodies: Death and Dirty Dealing at the Morgue – Peter Everett

Southwark Mortuary sounds like quite the swinging place in the 1980s…and probably before Peter Everett became superintendent. Theft of money, possessions, and organs are all things you don’t want to have to worry about for the deceased, but, they were all present and it seemed like quite the racket. Sketchy bunch of characters working, sketchy police officers involved, yikes.

It takes quite some time for Everett to be able to get a foot into sorting out the corruption, in no small part because there were so many deaths to deal with. A neverending cascade. You’d think that would be expected in a mortuary, but it can be overwhelming when there’s an uptick in crime, an uptick in natural deaths, and Everett also makes connections between the amount of unnatural deaths and crime in relation to the cutbacks made to various services.

This all sounds very dour, but the book is great if you’re okay with reading about mortuaries and crime. It reads very quickly, with smaller stories and interesting issues alongside the general inner workings of a bad renovation, staff situations that run from ridiculous to criminal, and for me, it’s nice to read more about Southwark in modern times, which is just a really interesting part of London. It still has the London hallmark of, oh, you’re renovating? Well you just found what is essentially a mass grave. And others, but that one to me is one of the most intriguing things because in this one, they weren’t dealing with a plague pit, and also, it gives me the impression that the foundation of Poltergeist just happens in London all the time and every young person is at risk of being a Carol Anne.

 

Whatever the need is, Danger Crumples can sort it out. He’s a professional who knows his way around some things.