"Set in a glamorous hotel in 1929, this genre-bending page-turner ripples with suspense and brilliantly bizarre gothic twists."
Got a thing for golden age crime? Like the sound of a novel that shapeshifts from an Agatha Christie-esque mystery into gruesome Brothers Grimm territory? You’ll love Kate Mascarenhas’ Hokey Pokey. Set in 1929, this ingeniously unexpected novel throngs with thrilling psychological depth and folkloric horror. Icily incisive, this astonishing story has all the potent punch of an absinthe infused Hokey Pokey cocktail.
One February evening, psychoanalyst Nora Dickinson checks into The Regent Hotel under a pseudonym. She’s travelled from Zurich to investigate a celebrated opera singer. Just as Nora’s making some headway, an elderly guest goes missing and she sees a strange dog in her room. At the same time, a heavy snow storm renders everyone isolated, and it’s not long before murder and madness emerge from the dankness.
Sandwiched between the mystery of the 1929 present are sections that lay bare Nora’s shockingly dysfunctional upbringing, and why she’s really shadowing the opera singer. The monstrous overtones of the revelations are nothing but wildly inventive, while the novel’s undertones explore the darkest echelons of identity and obsession. Rarely has a novel defied expectation, and its blurb, to such an intoxicating extent.
| Primary Genre | General Fiction |
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February, 1929. The Regent Hotel in Birmingham is a place of deception and glamour.
Behind its six-storeyed façade, guests sip absinthe cocktails on velvet banquettes, while the staff navigate the hotel's labyrinthine 'below stairs' to ensure the finest service is always at hand.
In the early evening, psychoanalyst Nora Dickinson checks in under a false name. It's unlike Nora to deceive – her aversion to lying borders on the pathological – but she's travelling with an agenda. Having shadowed the famous opera singer, Berenice Oxbow, from Zurich, she's determined not to lose sight of her now.
But when a terrible snow storm isolates the hotel – and its guests – from the outside world, reality appears to shift. Nora's grip loosens, and the nightmares she's worked hard to control begin to bare their teeth.
Kate Mascarenhas's latest novel offers her readers a horrifying ride through murder, madness and the darkest recesses of the mind
Hokey Pokey features in the following genres: General Fiction, Books of the Month, Crime and Mystery, Horror and Supernatural Fiction, Thriller and Suspense, Crime and mystery: women sleuths, Contemporary horror and ghost stories, Psychological thriller, Fiction, Gothic, Recommendations, Styles (G), Style qualifiers, Literary Fiction, Literary Fiction
Hokey Pokey is available in Paperback, Hardback, Ebook (Epub)
Hokey Pokey was written by Kate Mascarenhas and published by Apollo an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Hokey Pokey has 325 pages
£8.99
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