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Help for the Haunted by John Searles (view source)
Revision as of 12:35, 12 September 2014
, 12:35, 12 September 2014no edit summary
The accumulation of questions is hugely enjoyable, making the early pages fly by. Why do noise and light emanate from the basement? Why do Rose and Sylvie find effigies and home cooked meals on their doorstep after the murder? And how will either of them recover from that awful night?
Searles sets up all these scenes beautifully. However, about a quarter of the way through, I began to find the exposition clunky. The story of the girls’ grandparents is brought in and the narrative moves between several past episodes and then back to the present in a way I found quite jarring. The flow of the story was compromised as the switching is so frequent and in some parts, very strangely judged in terms of which scene follows which. Searles also ventures into a lot of detail about events and characters that ultimately have has little impact on the story.
This was initially frustrating because I felt that the set up indicated an excellent book. Searles has terrific skills as a wordsmith and individual sections really stand out. However, as well as the problematic exposition, as I got further into the book, I found too much setting up. When a writer builds tension and takes their time over it, the reader reasonably expects a big pay off, not for their patience, but simply because the incidents which are worth of a major build up have to be, well, major! There are certainly a few surprises along the way here but some of the more sinister set ups lead to such mundane explanations, I was disappointed.
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[[Category:Crime]]
[[Category:Paranormal]]