Review: An atmospheric chiller
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 12, 2013
In this novella length story, Matthew Napier tells of the deaths of his family.  He and his sister visit a fortune teller and are given a short but very grim reading.  Matthew turns to drink in his despair and the dark alleys and gutters of Victorian London infested by dreary and desperate creatures are very evocatively described.  He comes under the insidious influence of members of a spiritualist church and discovers more about his family than ever he suspected.The author creates a dismal London and gives us a character who is an evil genius.  If you've read his earlier Victorian horror tales, you will recognise this man.  The novella allows us the opportunity to go a little deeper into the main character than the short stories did, and we almost come full circle.  I was struck by the fact that although we are dealing with séances and spiritualism, with the supposed terror and pain of the recently dead, the real evil in this story comes straight from the human soul.  An atmospheric chiller!