Tag Archives: gothic mystery

#BookReview ‘The Midnight Feast’ by Lucy Foley #mystery #suspense

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I’m at a loss how to describe the plot of The Midnight Feast, the latest mystery suspense story by Lucy Foley, without giving away anything critical. It is dark, it is gothic, there is West Country paganism, teenage friendship, spite and a bit of romance set at an ultra-glamorous cliff-top hotel in Dorset which opens at midsummer. Lucy FoleyTold in three timelines. In 2025 as The Manor, described as ‘Soho Farmhouse meets Daylesford Organics,’ opens its doors to guests. At the same location fifteen years earlier when the house was occupied by a retired Government chief whip and his wife. And again in 2025, the day after the opening night party, billed as a midnight feast with mystery musical guests, art in the gardens and a Midsommar theme inspired by the folk horror film.
This is a clever thriller juggling timelines and character arcs, at the heart of which is a them v us dynamic between the house and the locals. People are not who they claim to be, the fun is working out who is who. Untangling the true identities of Francesca Meadows, hotel owner, her guest, staff and villagers is a continuing puzzle as I tried to connect the 2025 and 2010 storylines together. There are a lot of characters to keep track of.
During the summer solstice of 2010, a teenage girl on holiday with her family at a caravan park in Dorset meets a rich girl who is cooler and more confident than her and wants to be her friend. The events of that summer, romance, manipulation, bullying, drugs and death have repercussions on everyone there. The bird theme is a creepy folklore thing attributed to the local villagers, a kind of vigilante group who dress up in black bird costumes to impose justice on wrongdoers. On midsummer night, the birds come into their own.
Francesca the hotelier is a control-freak Goop-influenced woman who sells a lie; locally grown organic produce, for example, that is bought-in from London not grown locally or on the hotel’s organic veg plot. Her husband Owen is a fitness-obsessed architect responsible for developing the woodland retreat lodges, set in the hotel grounds. She doesn’t know he’s installed a tracker on her mobile phone, he doesn’t know she commissioned hidden cameras throughout the hotel. There are loads of secrets, over-the-top opulence, silliness and eerie things happening in the woods. And there is murder.
The hotel’s setting next to ancient woodland adds a gothic darkness to this thriller that is a welcome relief from the champagne, meditation and crystals. I found it a little slow at the beginning but once the guests arrive and the midnight feast approaches, the pace takes off.
An entertaining thriller which kept me guessing, it’s not just a whodunnit but who-was-it-done-to.

Click the title to read my reviews of these other novels by Lucy Foley:-
MURDER AT THE GRAND ALPINE HOTEL #1POIROT
THE GUEST LIST
THE HUNTING PARTY
THE INVITATION
THE PARIS APARTMENT

If you like this, try:-
‘The Last of Us’ by Rob Ewing
‘The Snakes’ by Sadie Jones
‘Summer House with Swimming Pool’ by Herman Koch

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COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Kate Quinn

#BookReview ‘The Whispering Muse’ by Laura Purcell #historical #mystery

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The Whispering Muse by Laura Purcell is a haunted mystery full of suspense, superstition and danger. Set at the Mermaid, a London theatre specialising in tragedies, the story is told by Jenny Wilcox, dresser to lead actress Lilith Erikson. Laura PurcellRecruited by Mrs Dyer, wife of the theatre owner, to be dresser to Lilith, Jenny is grateful for the wage which enables her to support her three siblings at home. Left alone after their elder brother, a scene painter at the Mermaid, ran away with one of the actresses, Jenny cannot believe her luck. Until Mrs Dyer, suspecting her husband of an affair with Lilith, sends Jenny to spy on her rival. The two women vie over one man, and over a mysterious watch that seems to give power to the holder. But the previous owner of the watch, an actor, died on stage.
I raced through this book in two days; there isn’t a pause or a breath without the action progressing. Jenny finds herself involved in plots, unable to say no, beholden to her benefactor, divided by the powerful two women and unsure if she should trust either, agreeing to things she knows are wrong and dangerous, regretting she got involved. Purcell is excellent at creating a dark and menacing atmosphere in the theatre, a place ridden with superstitions that seems to crumble around them, rotting and smelling rank as the lies increase and the betrayals intensify.
This is a dark story I didn’t want to put down until I knew the ending. The theatrical world adds to the gothic setting, the costumes and special effects, the scenery and superstitions, the bitchiness. The self-obsession of the actors contrasts with the down-to-earth backstage staff who, after all, are there for the wage and cannot rock the boat when odd things begin to happen. And happen they do, as the company progresses through the season from Macbeth, The Duchess of Malfi, Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet, finally to Faust, Part One.
One of my favourite books of 2024.

Here’s my review of THE SILENT COMPANIONS, also by Laura Purcell.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Night Child’ by Anna Quinn
‘Inheritance’ by Nora Roberts #1LostBrideTrilogy
‘The Lamplighters’ by Emma Stonex

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
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COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Kate Atkinson

#BookReview ‘The Taxidermist’s Daughter’ by Kate Mosse #historical #gothic #mystery

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I will say up front that the taxidermy sections in The Taxidermist’s Daughter by Kate Mosse were too gory for me. That aside, this is a gothic mystery set in the South Coast marshes of Fishbourne in 1912. In fact it seemed timeless, difficult to place the action only two years prior to the outbreak of the Great War.Kate MosseThe weather is ever-present to set the tone of the story: wind, rain and storms and Fishbourne is a real place. Mosse, a Chichester resident, uses her local knowledge to good effect. But, I struggled to connect with the story and cannot put my finger on why.
The storyline focuses on 22-year old Connie Gifford and her father, the taxidermist and his daughter, who live in an isolated house on the marshes at Fishbourne. In the Prologue, the village gathers in the churchyard to celebrate the Eve of St Mark. At the end of the evening, a woman is dead. So, already there is one dead woman and some secrets. Connie, it turns out, had an accident 10 years earlier and she has no memory either of what happened that day or of her life prior to the accident… more secrets. Are the two events, 10 years apart, connected? Are the same people involved? And if Connie’s memory returns, will she have the answer to the odd goings-on?
I admit to losing track of some of the peripheral characters who, unlike the atmospheric setting, are not fully-rounded. It is a strange book, taxidermy is an odd subject although it adds to the theme of reality versus false reality. There are lies between family and friends, lies between rich and poor; it is not only the guilty who lie, there are also secrets meant to protect the innocent. Amnesia is a difficult plot technique to use, too often it leaves the reader feeling cheated. I found the story rather drawn-out, the longer it went on the less mysterious it got.
My favourite Mosse novel remains Labyrinth.

And here are my reviews of other novels by Kate Mosse:-
CITADEL #3LANGUEDOC
THE BURNING CHAMBERS #1JOUBERT
THE CITY OF TEARS #2JOUBERT

If you like this, try:-
‘The Threshold’ by Anita Kovacevic
‘The House on Cold Hill’ by Peter James
‘The Little Red Chairs’ by Edna O’Brien

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#BookReview ‘The Quick’ by Lauren Owen #historical

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The Quick by Lauren Owen is a gothic tale about a brother and sister from Yorkshire. The story moves between Aiskew Hall – where we first meet Charlotte and James as children – and London; both settings atmospheric, both drawn so clearly you can smell the air. This book will reward re-reading: only after I had finished the last page did I go back to the beginning and appreciate the menace of the first sentence, “There were owls in the nursery when James was a boy.” Lauren Owen Aiskew is ever-present. When they are older and far from home, Charlotte reminds James “… how the air smelled green in spring, and smoke-grey in autumn, how on April mornings the mists would lift slowly, leaving a blue haze behind.”
This book has a really slow build. It starts with a prologue, an excerpt from 1890, which I read and then immediately forgot. I enjoyed Part One about the childhood of James and Charlotte at Aiskew, their mother dead, their father absent, Charlotte teaching James his alphabet by chalking the letters onto flagstones, playing games in the secrets of the big house. When the siblings are parted as James goes to university and then to London, the story starts to move a little quicker. I started to feel expectant, waiting for something to happen. Which of course, it does, and it is creepy and not what I was expecting. For me the story really gets going when Charlotte comes to London. After that, the action comes thick and fast. The tension in the second half is more like a film, making the first part of the book feel as if the author was feeling her way into the story.
Definitely one to read again. And I can see it on television.

If you like this, try:-
‘Frog Music’ by Emma Donoghue
‘The Penny Heart’ by Martine Bailey
‘Orphans of the Carnival’ by Carol Birch

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE QUICK by Lauren Owen via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-Rj