July 30, 2012
A former insane asylum, recently converted into an apartment complex in Eborby, Yorkshire, provides the backdrop for Ellis’s middling fourth mystery featuring Det. Insp. Joe Plantagenet (after 2011’s Kissing the Demons). When a six-year-old girl, the daughter of solicitor Melanie Hawkes, goes missing at Havenby Hall while Melanie is looking into strange happenings there, Plantagenet investigates. Meanwhile, a series of ritualistic burglaries by a man nicknamed “The Builder” disturbingly mimic notorious murders committed by Peter Brockmeister, who allegedly died at Havenby Hall years before. The unsettling dreams of one of the burglary victims, Lydia Brookes, to whom Plantagenet is attracted, may be the key to solving mysteries of past and present. While the revelations are satisfyingly creepy, the elaborate contortions and coincidences they require lessen their impact. Readers may find themselves turning the pages back to figure out what just happened rather than turning them forward to see what happens next.
September 1, 2012
When her six-year-old daughter, Daisy, is snatched from a playground and held for ransom, Melanie Hawkes makes some poor choices and ends up getting killed. Horrifyingly, her murder dovetails with a series of deaths tied to a building that once was a mental hospital housing an infamous serial killer. Peter Brockmeister is supposedly dead, but when DCI Emily Thwaite and DI Joe Plantagenet review the new homicides, they recognize a disturbing similarity to Brockmeister's MO. An evil presence is seeping from the building, forcing Joe to grapple with mankind's darkest side once again. VERDICT An abundance of creepy scenarios and characters make the pages fly by in this all-nighter. The book's unsettlingly fast pace and shifting points of view make the reader as jumpy as the characters in the fourth Joe Plantagenet procedural (after Kissing the Demons). A perfect getaway read for anyone who loves gothic horror.
Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
August 15, 2012
The police in the Yorkshire city of Eborby get a case that brings up shocking events from the past. Now tastefully converted to an apartment building, Boothgate House was once an insane asylum, Havenby Hall, home to the notorious serial killer Peter Brockmeister. Local solicitor Melanie Hawkes is found murdered in the style of Brockmeister after her child is kidnapped. Melanie's husband, Jack, was the architect for Boothgate, and Melanie had been looking into a suspicious death at Havenby. Lydia Brookes, a young woman with tragedy in her past, has acquired one of the apartments, along with a series of nightmares about a clock that she later finds in an antique shop. Her apartment is burgled, apparently by a thief known as The Builder who targets the unoccupied apartments of women and piles furniture in front of the door. This time he leaves an unsettling note: "I'LL SEE YOU NEXT TIME I CALL. BE READY." When a college professor investigating paranormal activity in the basement of Boothgate becomes the next victim, DI Joe Plantagenet, who's working both cases, begins to suspect that the past is influencing the present. Investigation reveals that many of the people involved in his current cases have connections to creepy Havenby Hall. Joe and his colleagues have their hands full trying to catch a killer before he strikes again. Police procedural meets horror in Plantagenet's fourth (Kissing the Demons, 2011, etc.). The tricky mystery is best read in the bright light of day.
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August 1, 2012
Years ago, Havenby Hall was an insane asylum, a secret place that most citizens of Eborby preferred to ignore or forget. Its most famous inmate was serial-killer Peter Brockmeister, known for the depravity and viciousness of the multiple murders he committed. Eventually, Brockmeister died, and most of the hall's inmates were placed elsewhere, with Havenby converted to luxury flats. DI Joe Plantagenet is called to investigate the kidnapping of the young daughter of a local lawyer, but the kidnapping turns into a murder case, and the victim can be directly linked to the hall. As more bodies begin to pile up, Joe feels that the hall's dark history may still be casting its shadow. Fast paced, cleverly plotted, and full of suspense, this novelpart horror story, part police procedural, part psychological thrillershould appeal to a wide range of mystery fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)