Wow, I really could not put this book down, which is why almost nothing at all has been done for 2 days!! This is one of the best books I've read in some time and will eagerly be reading the other books by Sarah Rayne - although I may have to save them for holiday times because if they are as good as this one nothing will get done again!!
The story is based around Calvary Gaol, just on the edge of the Lake District which was for some time the execution prison for the north of England. Now disused Georgina Grey heads to Thornbeck to find out more about her great grandfather Walter Kane and to play her part in the winding up of the Caradoc Society into Psychic research to which Walter had left a bequest. Walter was the Doctor at Calvary Gaol in the 1930's and Georgina get drawn into the story of Walter and the Gaol. Also interested in Calvary is TV film maker Chad Ingram and his team who are planning on carrying out experiments in the Gaols execution suite.
Sarah Rayne has woven a complex set of stories together with great ease making it an enthralling experience for the reader to jump between the stories of Lewis Caradoc and Nicholas O'Kane in 1917, to Walter, Neville Fremlin and Elizabeth Molland in the 1930's and Georgina, Chad and Vincent Meade in present day Cumbria. Rayne has given us a real sense of what the jail must have been like and drawn some characters which it is so easy to like and admire and others which are well drawn in their viscious natures or vanity. She has created a plot with some amazing twists and turns, one or two I had an inkling may have been coming and others which hit me like a sledgehammer. A brilliant book and I really can't wait to read more of her work.
Ciao
Sue
XX
Currently reading Kidnapped and other dispatches by Alan Johnson
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