Ghosts in the Cloisters by
Mark Bryant
pbk out May 98
(Hodder & Stoughton)
at £6.99
Subtitled “Clerical Tales of Mystery and the Supernatural”, this is an anthology of eighteen short stories, all of whom share some sort of a religious theme or setting designed to send a shiver down your spine. Religion and ghosts are natural partners. Mark Bryant is to be congratulated on casting his net wide. There are famous names here, among them E. Nesbit, Thackeray, William Morris, R.H. Barham and Sheridan Le Fanu. The best of the bunch are probably Ruth Rendell’s “The Haunting of Shorely Rectory”, which puts a typically unusual slant upon an old idea, and M.R. James’s “Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook”, which is one of the classics of the genre.
But nothing’s perfect. The collection is slanted, perhaps inevitably, towards the later nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. And, more seriously, it is a great shame that there is not more information about the individual authors and when they wrote. Bryant’s introduction is tantalisingly brief - a lengthier account of this potentially fascinating mariage of subject and slant would have been welcome.
(
Andrew Taylor
- author of the highly acclaimed Roth & Lydmouth Series)
Ghosts in the Cloisters by
Mark Bryant