An absorbing and stimulating read with a slightly supernatural chill. Barrister Clare needs to keep her well known level head and her mettle about her when a meeting with a clairvoyant leads her to research her own family history. Clare is meticulous in her delving and leaves no stone unturned, which unsettles an eerie slice of history. This is discerning and subtle writing, without cheap thrills, instead layers of tension are built that feel utterly realistic. An intriguing mystery with an added thrill of suspense, like Clare, you may find yourself double checking that you’ve locked your door at night. ~ Liz Robinson
Clare Mallory has a Victorian mourning locket with the photograph of a girl and a curl of her hair. When Clare loses the locket in a fortune-teller's tent her quest to find it draws her into a dark episode of the family's past and the true circumstances of the girl's untimely death at Danby Hall, her Norfolk home. The locket has been taken by the fortune-teller herself, sensing a troubled history and danger ahead. But her attempts to understand the warning signs release forces long held at bay. Events of the past seep into the present until the reappearance of a man who vanished from Danby Hall in 1887 threatens not only her life but Clare's too. 'It was lying on the rug with the chain curled round. It must have come off when the girl had grabbed her hat and basket and marched off with barely a word. As soon as she picked the thing up she had felt it and once she had prised it open there was no doubt at all.'
'Draws the reader in immediately and has all the elements of an intriguing mystery. In short, a page-turner. The heroine, Clare, is engaging and Madame Pavonia a suitably exotic yet credibly mundane fortune teller, and throughout there is a nice balance of the chillingly supernatural with a sharply-observed contemporary England peopled by vividly painted characters - some lovely idiosyncratic touches and descriptions.' - Shena Mackay
Author
About Christopher Bowden
Christopher Bowden lives in south London. His three previous novels are The Red House, The Blue Book, and The Yellow Room, the first published in 2007.
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