The Whispering

March 31, 2014
Rayne’s fourth Flint and West ghost story (after The Silence) is another entertaining and largely standalone haunted house tale. While Oxford professor Michael Flint reads through old journals at remote Fosse House for a music history work he’s coauthoring, he discovers that his host, Luisa Gilmore, is sometimes visited by a long-dead soldier. In Oxford, Flint’s partner, antiques dealer Nell West, researches parallel stories, learning the tales of Russian thieves, disfigured choir singers, and others during WWI. Rayne keeps her protagonists separated more than usual, and much of the story is told through the journals that Flint is reading, which help to develop a variety of solid and distinct narrative voices. As always, the horror is more of the M.R. James variety than the Stephen King variety (atmospheric creepiness rather than boogeymen), but that doesn’t reduce the sense of palpable danger. Rayne lightens but doesn’t undercut the tension with tales of Wilberforce, Flint’s mischievous cat. Fans of ghost stories will continue to appreciate these supernatural investigations.

May 15, 2014
Michael Flint, a music and literature professor at Oxford, is working on a book about musical influences on the poets of WWI. Flint travels to the remote fens, in eastern England, to visit Fosse House and examine the records concerning the Palestrina Choir, circa 190014. His host, the personable but secretive septuagenarian Luisa Gilmore, welcomes Michael, even gives him a place to sleep when inclement weather makes traveling to the nearby town impossible, but soon Michael discovers that the history of Luisa's family, not to mention the history of the choir, is filled with secrets. This is horror with a definite gothic feel: a remote, isolated house; family secrets; a mysterious stranger (who is quite possibly not exactly alive anymore); dark shadows; and a generally ominous, unsettling feeling. Highly enjoyable mainstream horror fare from a genre veteran.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)