Review: Highly recommended
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 12, 2013
This is a novella by David Haynes which features some of the characters first introduced in his selections of short stories - Mask of the Macabre and Ballet of the Bones - as well as introducing new ones. The story stands alongside the anthologies, but it is not necessary to have read them first. Once again the author has done a wonderful job of recreating the seamier side of Victorian London, writing convincingly in a style appropriate to those times.This time he turns his mind to the early Spiritualists, to chilling effect. The result is a very atmospheric, macabre story introducing a young man who has lost everything in life that he holds dear. It is a tale with a lot of twists and turns in it, and it is not until the very final couple of pages that everything slots into place in a very clever ending.