Susan Hill - The Woman In Black

[dem]

Susan Hill - Printer's Devil Court (Profile, 2014)

Blurb:
On a dark November evening at the turn of the century, three medical students make an unholy pact. For the young Hugh Meredith, it is the beginning of a nightmare that will pursue him to the grave – and perhaps beyond.

In the cellar of their narrow lodging house in Printer’s Devil court, and in a subterranean annex of the hospital, they begin to experiment with the boundaries that separate the living from the dead, witnessing events both extraordinary and terrifying.

Years later, when Hugh must return to Printer’s Devil Court and face his demons, strange events take clear that his youthful actions have had consequences worse than anything he could have imagined.

A manuscript, The Wrong Life, found among the papers of the late Dr. Hugh Meredith.

As a twenty-five year old medical student, Meredith shares digs with contemporaries Walter Powell and Rafe McAllister whose shared ambition is to reanimate a corpse. Following a successful exercise with a cat, the pair borrow two dying paupers from St. Luke's Hospital, the one an elderly man, the other, Grace, a young woman of no more than twenty, found frozen on the Embankment. As the old timer breathes his last, they trap his life-force in a glass phial and transfer it to the girl, Grace, who revives. Meredith, disgusted at having endorsed such a project, and fearful that he's been the victim of a ghastly practical joke, unfriends Powell and McAllister in perpetuity. They continue their Frankenstein experiments for some years until struck from the medical register for body-snatching and sundry unethical practices.

Forty years later, Meredith, a country GP, has cause to return to the City when his stepson is appointed a consultant at St. Luke's. The house in Printer's Devil Court where the nefarious pair conducted operations has since been demolished, but something draws him to the churchyard at back of St. Luke's-of-the-gate where a distressed young woman nightly searches among the graves ...

A decent variation on a familiar theme with tragic ghost and melodramatic touches, held my interest throughout the 105 pages, and yet ... while Printer's Devil Court gets the job done, this "Queen of the traditional ghost story ... no one chills to the heart like Susan Hill" hyperbole does her no favours whatsoever. That level of acclaim might mislead the unwary to expect a reading experience unsurpassed in all their experience. I like it well enough but that's all. Dodgy pay-off apart, am not sure this flimsy supernatural thriller will live long in the memory.

[dem]

Susan Hill - The Travelling Bag and other Ghostly Tales (Profile, 2016)

Cover design: Peter Dyer

The Travelling Bag
Boy Twenty-One
Alice Baker
The Front Room

Blurb:

From the foggy streets of Victorian London to the eerie perfection of 1950s suburbia, the everyday is invaded by the otherworldly in this unforgettable collection of new ghost stories from the bestselling author of The Woman in Black.

In the title story, on a murky evening in a club off St James, a paranormal detective recounts his most memorable case, one whose horrifying denouement took place in that very building.

A lonely boy makes a friend in 'Boy Twenty-One', but years later is forced to question the very nature of that friendship.

'Alice Baker' tells the story of a mysterious new office worker who is accompanied by a lingering smell of decay.

And in 'The Front Room', a devoutly Christian mother tries to protect her children from the evil influence of their grandmother, both when she is alive and afterwards.

This is Susan Hill at her best, telling characteristically creepy and surprising tales of thwarted ambition, terrifying revenge and supernatural stirrings that will leave you wide-awake long into the night.

Hill's Profile editions seem to be something of a charity shop favourite. Picked up yet another one for 99p in the Dalston Junction Oxfam earlier, along with Scott McCracken's Pulp: Reading Popular Fiction (Manchester Uni Press, 1998) for same price.

[dem]

The Travelling Bag: Set in London's Tabor Club. Dr. Gilbert Roper, psychic private investigator, confides the juicy details of his most "intriguing" case. Sir Silas Webb gained a knighthood, a multitude of honorary degrees, huge financial reward, through stealing the life work of benefactor, Dr. Walter Craig, and claiming it as his own. Learning of Webb's aversion to moths, Craig plays him a childish practical joke, with disastrous consequences. Webb does not take death lying down and retaliates in kind, though the reader suspects the spectral insects hounding Craig to madness are fancies born of his guilt.

A pleasant enough read but ... slight. Possibly inspired by H. G. Wells' The Moth? May well chill a Times critic to the very soul but unlikely to have same effect on rest of us.

[jamesdoig]

Jan 18, 2019 21:02:26 GMT dem said:

Hill's Profile editions seem to be something of a charity shop favourite. Picked up yet another one for 99p in the Dalston Junction Oxfam earlier

Same in this part of the world - I quite like them, though. I didn't think The Travelling Bag was as good as some of the others: The Small Hand, The Man in the Picture etc. I've never tried her Simon Serrailler series - must give them a go some time.