Unhallowed Ground by
Gillian White
pbk out March 99
(Corgi)
at £5.99
Georgina Jefferson is a social worker who has been appalled by the death of a little girl, Angels Hopkins. She feels that she is blamed by the media for the death and flees London in despair to seek refuge at Furze Pen, a picturesque thatched cottage in a peaceful valley on Dartmoor. The cottage belonged to her dead brother, Stephen Southwell, an artist, and seems the ideal place to recover from the pressures of her job in London. But all is not as pleasing as it seems at Furze Pen. The cottage is cold and isolated and the neighbours, particularly the Cramers, are weird and strangely intimidating. There is, also, a silent watcher on the distant hill and Georgie, alone and depressed, feels threatened. Her condition worsens as strange happenings take place at the cottage. The watcher begins to stalk her. Chickens are attacked and their heads chopped off. There is a fire and smouldering among the ashes are the remains of a child's doll. Then a man is found with his foot cut off. It is enough to make Georgie leave and when an unknown buyer makes an offer for the cottage she is tempted to sell. But she hangs on, keen to know what is going on, and is, inevitably, alone and vulnerable when the terror strikes during a snow storm.
The blurbs on the cover speak of Gillian White' s "psychological thrillers" which are "full of suspense". But the narrative does not flow as smoothly as one would wish. There are frequent flashbacks in the first part of the book which often hold up the action and towards the end the author switches suddenly back and forth from the past tense to the present. This may be an attempt to increase tension, though it is hardly necessary. The exposure of the sympathetic Georgina to danger provides tension enough. And her involvement in the death of a child at the end of the book provides an interesting parallel with the death of Angels Hopkins at the beginning.
This is a novel of terror which some readers may find unrealistic and unpalatable, but it is a compelling read and one keeps turning the pages to find out what happened next.
Unhallowed Ground by
Gillian White