Sarah Ward (1)

I love historical fiction and I find I am always most interested in Victorian times onwards so The Quickening, set in 1925 but with a toe in the late 1800s, appealed to me. Its very gothic feel just heightened my anticipation and enjoyment.

Louisa Drew is a photographer and pregnant. She's called upon to go from London to Brighton to photograph items at Clewer Hall for an auction. From the minute she is given the assignment she knows something isn't right about the hall and she later learns show more that a well-known séance took place there in 1896. Why was she specifically requested to take the photographs? Why is she so uncomfortable at the hall? And why are the family recreating the séance all these years later?

Well, to learn all that you will have to read the book, but I found this a thoroughly enjoyable and engrossing read. I loved Louisa. She's well ahead of her time, a woman not only working whilst married but also whilst pregnant. She's very independent and pretty feisty. She's already suffered the worst that can happen to her so she's forging ahead with her life as best she can. I did often wonder why she was sticking her nose into matters at the hall, but her investigative skills could put Miss Marple to shame and she needed to know why she was there.

Rhiannon Ward has done an excellent job with this story. It's creepy and sinister, with a strong sense of the unexplained, and that sense of never knowing if any of it could in fact be explained away or if it was the spirit world at work. I loved the feel of the faded hall as the backdrop. Clewer Hall is a character in its own right, with its few remaining servants providing a hint of its glory days. Ward has created atmosphere in spades with dark corners, shadows and mysterious sightings.

This is a mystery novel but it felt like more than that for me. Louisa unearths secrets left, right and centre, but it felt more like a story of grief, of life after the First World War, of learning to make do with what is left. Ward beautifully portrays what it's like to be left behind. It's a fabulous read. show less

The Shadowing has a very interesting and appealing (for the reader, at least) setting. Hester travels from her home in Bristol to Southwell in Nottinghamshire to investigate the death of her sister in the workhouse there. I've visited the workhouse and I found that Rhiannon Ward really brought it to life in this book.

Hester is 22 and fairly naïve to be travelling alone in the 1800s. She comes from a strict Quaker background and her clothes immediately identify her as such. She gets into show more some quite dangerous situations in her pursuit of the truth about Mercy and the child that she was carrying when she entered the workhouse. It's a really taut and absorbing storyline which kept my interest and built up to quite the ending.

What sets Ward's books out are the side plots of spirituality. Hester sees what she calls shadowings, spirits who seem to accompany her in her day to day life, sometimes with a sinister sense of foreboding and other times a little more benign. This aspect felt plausible and very well-written.

I loved the descriptions of life in the small town. To me it felt like the workhouse loomed over them, and it and its inhabitants felt very real. I could really imagine life in Southwell from this book and it wasn't hard to imagine how it must have felt to have to enter the workhouse. Hester gets to know the local innkeeper, Matthew, and his two staff, Joan and Annie, and I enjoyed the relationships she forged with them in particular.

The author has weaved a historical tale that felt fresh. Hester makes some shocking discoveries during her time in Southwell and undergoes quite a transformation from a meek young woman to one determined to learn the truth and put right the wrongs that she unearths. The Shadowing is an atmospheric gothic read that might just send a shiver down your spine. I enjoyed it very much. show less

The deepest secrets are the ones we keep from ourselves in this richly atmospheric, compellingly written, and expertly constructed crime debut from an emerging talent. Derbyshire, 1978: a small town in the idyllic English countryside is traumatized by the kidnapping of two young schoolgirls, Rachel Jones and Sophie Jenkins. Within hours, Rachel is found wandering alone near the roadside, unharmed yet unable to remember anything, except that her abductor was a woman. No trace of Sophie is show more ever discovered.

Present day: over thirty years later, Sophie's mother commits suicide. Detective inspector Francis Sadler and detective constable Connie Childs are assigned to look at the kidnapping again to see if modern police methods can discover something that the original team missed. Rachel, with the help of her formidable mother and grandmother, recovered from the kidnapping and has become a family genealogist. She wants nothing more than to continue living quietly beneath the radar, but the discovery of the strangled body of one of her former teachers days after the suicide brings the national media back to her doorstep. Desperate to stop a modern killer from striking again, Rachel and the police must unpick the clues to uncover what really happened all those years ago as the past threatens to engulf the present.

My Thoughts:

Beautifully written and without any scenes of over the top violence...so it should appeal to those that like a softer, more relaxed mystery... yet also have the qualities that we lovers of hard crime books look for in our reads. It is written in a style reminiscent of some of the classic crime writers with the focus on inhabitants of a small town, in this case one in Derbyshire.

What I actually found interesting were the little mundane facts interwoven with the plot making the characters a little more real. We have Sergeant Sandler who’s sleeping with a married woman, one detective working hard to make a name for herself, the other detective becoming more and more miserable as the date of his impending nuptials comes closer, Rachel who lives a mundane life with a great career as a genealogist, helping others follow their own ancestral descent, yet never delves into her own past with respect to her kidnapping. An interesting combination that produces a more than average first novel for this author. I look forward to more from DC Childs, DI Sadler, from this talented author. show less

In 1978, two girls are abducted in a small Derbyshire town, but only one lives to tell the tale. Rachel Jones is now a professional genealogist, digging into past personal histories for a living, but her own family tree is where the truth is hidden. When a suicide and a murder, apparently unconnected, cause the police to reopen the mystery of her abduction and Sophie Jenkins' disappearance, Rachel is left with some uncomfortable questions about her own background.

I really enjoyed this one, show more and not just for the mystery - the detectives are a likeable bunch, although I'm not sure where the stress about Palmer's wedding was supposed to be leading, and the family history angle is always a favourite with me. I come from a matriarchal family like Rachel's, and I've done some amateur family history rooting of my own, so I was completely invested in the puzzle. I knew that illegitimacy would be the issue, but pinned the blame on the wrong family to start with - I was thinking Catherine Cookson, not crime fiction! I also love that the women in the story are all strong northern characters, whether for good or ill. A cleverly written and atmospheric mystery, perfect for finishing off my reading year. show less