Voices in Darkness by
Susan Hepburn
pbk out February 03
(Piatkus)
at £5.99
An entertaining and readable book, though a little odd in some respects.
Plenty of village slayings, rather reminiscent of 'Midsomer Murders', but
rather casually reported. Undoubtedly a crime novel, but mixed in with the
supernatural in a rather confusing way.
The 'heroine', Dr Rhianna Summers, a sociologist with expertise in folklore,
is persuaded to take on project to research a group of isolated villages called
the Swiffords, in some unspecified part of southern England. She had
resigned after a family tragedy and came back unwillingly, just to defeat the
prospect of a hated academic rival getting the job.
As soon as she gets to the Swiffords, people start dying, to say nothing of
some goats - there is a mystic coven at work and the reader is let in early on
their identity. Some folk start hearing Voices in their minds, a sort of
epidemic schizophrenia, which has to be supernatural.
Rhianna's main task is to interview a pair of sisters in their nineties, who
have a treasure-trove of memories of the old days in the villages, but her
main problems are with the other people in the village, some of whom are
old residents, the rest 'incomers'.
One thing I found a little strange was that there was considerable amount of
moderately bad language and 'common' speech, which seemed to be out of
character with middle-class folk, including one who was a multi-lingual
translator and even Dr Summers (PhD) herself - there was some superfluous
'bleeding 'ell' and 'bugger me' stuff, together with dropped 'aitches, that sat
uneasily with the people portrayed. However, this nit-picking was balanced
by a story that at least kept you turning the pages, even if only to discover
where this tortuous plot was heading. There was bit of a cheat in it, as the
culprit was someone who did not appear in the flesh until near the end of the
book .
All the same, an engaging yarn to while away a few hours.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
