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Post by dem bones on Jul 30, 2022 9:46:06 GMT
Nicci Rae - Mad Bess Wood (CreateSpace, 2014) Blurb: If you go down to the woods today..........
For New Yorker Gus Freeman, a visit to England fulfils a lifelong dream — and breeds a lifetime of nightmares!
When her beloved best friend is killed in a drug-related shooting, Gus Freeman's world is turned upside down and, after an unexpected windfall, she decides to take a break from her dead end job and make the pilgrimage to England to walk in the steps of her hero, Lord Byron. Her trip takes her from the imposing Harrow School to Byron's seat of learning in Cambridge where a chance encounter leads her back to London and to a quaint inn called The Six Bells. Despite it's charming facade, The Six Bells has it's secrets and when Gus befriends a seemingly friendly local couple she discovers that some secrets are buried deeper than others. When the line between worlds blurs, a door to the past is opened, and, as her search for the truth reaches it's terrifying conclusion, Gus comes to realise that the answer lies — restlessly — in nearby Mad Bess Wood.
Based on real events, Mad Bess Wood is the place where the past and present collide — and neither are necessarily on your side! When Augusta 'Gus' Freeman, is bequeathed $20, 000 by her best friend Lizzie Holmes, she uses it to fund a pilgrimage to England as they'd both vowed to trace Byron's footsteps from Newstead Abbey through Harrow, Marylebone, Cambridge, etc. For the NW London leg of the tour, Gus takes a room at The Six Bells, Ducks Hill Road, West Ruislip, next door to the woods. The proprietor, Matt, seems oblivious to the fact that its staircase is haunted by a lad missing his front teeth. Gus is befriended by fiftysomethings Stella & Will Longstaffe, Six Bells regulars, whose fifteen-year-old son, Hugh, boards at Harrow. On nosing out the young American's interests, Stella insists on their treating her to a guided tour of the school followed by a drink in The Castle. Gus is grateful for the kindness even if she finds her hosts overbearing. Not that she has need worry how to get rid of them. The following morning, a lorry takes out Stella as she's waving to Gus outside the haunted pub. What's left of the poor woman is not pleasant to look at. Gus does her best to console Will on his bereavement, but the holiday having turned miserable, she books an early flight home. Which is when Hugh goes missing. Gus is only vaguely acquainted with the boy — she shared a bottle of filched cider with him in the beer garden the previous day when he bunked off school — but the police insist she stay put in Ruislip until he shows up. Phantom calls on her mobile. The ghost of live fast, die way-too young Lizzie visits her at the pub. John Brill, the phantom kid with no teeth, entices her to Mad Bess Wood, scene of his murder in February 1837 by persons unknown. Shortly before Christmas, 1836, Brill, a fifteen-year-old farm labourer, gave evidence against two men seen poaching from his employer, Mr. Churchill's farm. Friends of the convicted men threatened violent retribution. The boy was felled with a billhook while mending a fence in the wood. Seven years later, a convicted sheep rustler, Charles Lamb, was charged with the murder on the evidence of a gaol mate - and acquitted. John won't rest until the truth is out. Seventeen short chapters down of 31 (the pages aren't numbered). To be concluded
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Post by andydecker on Jul 30, 2022 11:46:05 GMT
Nicci Rae - Mad Bess Wood (CreateSpace, 2014) (the pages aren't numbered). The professional world of CreateSpace ... One would think this could have been fixed in 8 years. |
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jul 30, 2022 12:12:40 GMT
Nicci Rae - Mad Bess Wood (CreateSpace, 2014) (the pages aren't numbered). The professional world of CreateSpace ... One would think this could have been fixed in 8 years. I assume such things are up to the author. |
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Post by dem bones on Aug 1, 2022 8:02:17 GMT
"I would later read that the two accused, when in court, requested to visit John's body, using as a measure of their innocence an old wives tale that blood will burst from the body in the presence of a murderer." It's the story matters, and having just finished Mad Bess Wood, I'm delighted to have lucked upon it. During lockdown, I unintentionally fell into a 'Haunted' London side-project, which is how I first learned of the killing of John Brill and various "explanations" as to how the section of the wood near where his corpse was found came by its name (the Brill murder is quite well known, but wasn't to me). Anyway, a few weeks back I was checking out the local history bibliography on Ruislip Online, and there's this novel gives the murder mystery a haunted pub/ woods slant. Seemed like something I needed to look into — and it's only £3.81 new on Am*z*n.uk. "It seems that not only are you digging up our ghosts but you have also been waking them up." The lead ghost (there are several), that of the murdered boy, is resentful of the fact that he was denied decent burial (according to this version of the history, his bones were dumped in the pub cellar); his own family and their children having met with wretched deaths, he seeks to wipe out those of his killers, and that of a man who witnessed his murder from behind a tree but declined to intervene. Nicci Rae has also written a ghost novel centred around the Bethnal Green tube station disaster, so hope to get around to that in the not too distant. Depressing as it was inevitable The Six Bells is now evidently an ex-pub.
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