The Stranger House

Reginald Hill has written dozens of books, but I think I love this one the best. Having nothing to do with Hill's usual Daziel and Pascoe series, this almost Gothic novel is set in Cumbria, a dark place literally caught in season-long shadow, during part of the year. With a near-seamless interweaving of two pasts and the present, the author no only presents us with four murders, but throws in a few details about the Child Migrant Scheme as well. I do wish there was more about this horrible part of England's past in the novel, and that's about my only issue with the story-line.

Two strangers meet in a tiny town called Illthwaite, to search out the history of their respective family's. Stranger House is filled with a lot of coincidences, a show more touch of ghosts, a large bunch of memorable characters, and quite a few twists and turns. I will still trying to figure out which person did the most wrong, buy the end of the novel! Ghosts, dark secrets, both past and present, villagers obviously hiding things from our protagonists, who are brought together supernaturally, a rather large serving of coincidence plus identically brutal identical twins, misty moors and bogs. WOW! It could have been rather preposterous in the way that Sam and Miguel arrive a the same moment with interlocking stories. But Hill is perfectly able to weave them together in a way that's not only believable, but in a very satisfactory way. Not only is Miguel's ability to see ghosts, and have them guide them through his life to this moment, but Sam's character as a female lead is strong, vibrant, and quite likable.

The atmosphere in the novel feels authentic, despite a lead theme of a village with inhabitants that seem still in the 19th century at best. Hill makes it all somehow seem absolutely realistic, proves a meticulous knowledge and background research in as widely separated fields as mathematics and theology and throws many pieces of interesting facts in the story, many of which later proves to be important for the continuing plot. With all of this, it does not feel artificial or far-fetched at all. The clash between the two main characters is both very entertaining and funny and their relationship transforms in a loving way. The story, finally, is both convincingly told and most logical, and above all, extremely thrilling.

Some of the lines from the book I will be quoting:
"When murk began to coalesce into form, she found herself standing by a font consisting of a granite block out of which a basin had been scooped deep enough for an infant to drown in. Around its rough-hewn sides a not incompetent artist had carved a frieze of spasmodic dancers doing a conga behind a hooded figure carrying a scythe."

"He raised his eyebrows comically as he spoke. His eyes had a distinctly flirtatious twinkle. How did he get it there? she asked herself. With an eyedropper?"

"'So what you're saying is you've been getting like e-mails from God dot com?" she mocked. "How do you know it's not just spam from the devil like your confessor tried to tell you?'" show less

It seems Reginald Hill has been one of the authors I have intended to read but have never got to (which is why I had several of his mysteries at home). I was very excited to receive an ARC for The Stranger House. But, SURPRISE!, this one is a fabulous, beautifully-written, STAND ALONE small town mystery with a little of everything: historical mysteries, small town tight-lips, a dash of romance, an eclectic mix of fascinatingly odd and very human characters and lots of family secrets. In this day where the thriller often eclipses the mystery, I so love it when a excellent mystery comes along to trump them all. I often use mysteries as a literary palette-cleanser between different kinds of reads...and ooo, I've found a new love. (writen 7/05)

The plot cleverly weaves the strand of two separate stories, an Australian girl trying to find out what happened to her grandmother decades ago and a Spanish would be priest with a centuries old secret to uncover. While I found the Sam character to be not particularly likable, everything was well plotted and it was an interesting and enjoyable read

The Stranger House, by Reginald Hill, brings together unlikely allies in an unexpected place: Sam Flood is a brilliant mathematician from Australia who is searching for her family roots in Northern England, while Mig Madero is a half-English, half-Spanish man who has only just recently dropped out of the seminary and is now pursuing a historical mystery concerning an ancestor and the persecution of Catholics in England under Elizabeth I. When these two young people meet up in the village of Illthwaite, they soon discover that the villagers know more about their respective searches than they are telling, and that the reasons for their disinclination to help the strangers are more sinister than Sam and Mig can fathom.... This is a show more stand-alone novel by the creator of the Dalziel and Pascoe police procedural series, and a humdinger of a tale it is at that! There are some very scary bits, some history lessons, some very funny bits and overall, the creation of several very vibrant characters whom the reader feels have just stepped out for a minute and will soon be back talking to us in a cozy room somewhere. I really loved Hill's writing style and found the story gripping; highly recommended, and I'll be looking for more of his stand-alone work! show less

This is basically Hamlet-without-the-prince. At the blacker end of Hill's crime fiction, but still within the range of things he covers in his Dalziel and Pascoe novels. But without Dalziel and Pascoe, which is fair enough, given that Hill has been churning out D&P novels for the last forty years: he deserves a break. Unfortunately, he doesn't really give us much to fill the gap.

The two young strangers-in-town who act as POV characters, an Australian mathematician and a Spanish historian, are lively and interesting. However, like Hill's younger police officers in the more recent D&P novels, they don't quite work as convincing characters. He does a much more convincing job with the older characters - the pub landlady, the squire, the show more smith.

With his usual knack for picking the brighter moments in British history, this book takes the forced deportation of British children to Australia in the 1950s and 60s as one central theme, and the persecution of Roman Catholic priests under Elizabeth I as another. All set, naturally, in a small Cumbrian village where people have been keeping their dark secrets hidden for far too long.

The story comes loaded with a certain amount of mythical portentousness and supernatural visions, which aren't quite essential to the story, but are also not quite explained away as nonsense. This leaves us with the uncomfortable feeling that the author might be expecting us to take the hocuspocus seriously, something I wouldn't have thought a writer in Hill's position and with his undoubted technical skill needed to resort to.

So: good by most standards, but not quite up to what one might expect from Hill. show less

I was unsure about this when I started, with people seeing ghosts from the 16th century, but actually I really enjoyed it because it is an excellently written thriller, which draws on a number of interesting historical facts. These include recusancy (essentially persecution of non C of E faiths from 16-19th century, mainly but not exclusively Catholics) and the forcible transport of orphans to Australia from the UK in the 20th century. Hill skilfully weaves these elements into a gripping tale set in Cumbria that makes you want to keep reading until the very end. Highly recommended.

just finished Reginald Hill's excellent latest novel, "The Stranger House". Reginald Hill is my favourite writer bar none; he writes murder mysteries but the genre is really just a vehicle for the story, which invariably transcends the usual limits of murder mysteries.

In this one, the two protagonists are a mathematician and a devout Catholic, a mystic, who was on the road to become a priest when an accident (+ vision) made him realise he had no vocation. He retains his faith, and his sensitivity to the supernatural, and believes that everything is "meant". There's no such thing as coincidence in his world. Now he's a very intelligent guy and does not ignore the evidence in front of him - in fact he constantly revises what he thinks is show more 'meant' in the light of new evidence - but his world definitely has meaning and it's his job to find it, not to create it.

The mathematician is also very interested in coincidence; from her point of view a lot of things that look wildly improbable are in fact statistically just as likely to happen as anything else, and a good deal more likely than you'd think. Her world also has meaning - mathematical meaning - and it's her job to find it.

They meet by accident, she feels, and by design, he's convinced, on the road to discovering the solutions to two family mysteries that turn out to be somewhat linked (not much; the overlap is slight). The whole question of the book is, of course, the role of coincidence - how unlikely are apparently unlikely events? Are they "meant"? Are they actually unlikely? Is it possible for intelligent people to come to diametrically opposed conclusions about causation and still both produce fruitful theoretical constructs of the world, on which they can legitimately (and usefully) base their actions? The conclusion the book seems to come to is that one theoretical construct works about as well as the other, when applied by intelligent people who keep their eyes open.

It was fascinating, and I liked the characters too, and I recommend the book highly. And I also liked that it took religion, and visions, seriously, and represented its religious and its atheist protagonists, and their worldviews, with equal sympathy and respect.

I later read a review of it that struck me as pretty funny - it complained that "there were far too many coincidences" in the novel. I mean, what did the reviewer think the point of the book was? But since, for that reviewer, coincidence is always, only, nothing but a lame plot device, since after all, nothing CAN be "meant", since there is no God, then a book can't represent a world view in which God exists. And so you have the paradox that a book that examines coincidence and meaning is apparently not allowed to introduce coincidence into its plot structure.

On the other hand that's not an entirely unfair critical approach (though I wouldn't say it applied to this book); because even a book that's all about divine providence (say) had better not rely on coincidence too much, or it will still be a lousy book, riddled with unconvincing plot devices. show less