The Winter Ghosts

There's no doubt that Kate Mosse can spin a good yarn. Labyrinth and Sepulchre were two of my favourite recent reads, so I was delighted to spot The Winter Ghosts in my local library. (Even though it's August!) I didn't read the jacket blurb, trusting to past experience that I would enjoy the book, so I was slightly disappointed to realise from page one that it's set in exactly the same area as the previous novels.

The set-up is different. Freddie Watson has been sent to the South of France in 1933, to recuperate after a serious illness. He's still obsessed with the death of his elder brother George on the eve of the Battle of the Somme. It soon becomes clear that Freddie is sick in mind as well as body.

In a foolhardy attempt to make his way through the Pyrenees in an unreliable car he almost veers off the road and has to find help in an isolated village with a strange atmosphere. The locals make him welcome, and even invite him to a local festival, where he meets a beautiful woman called Fabrissa. As the evening passes and the wine flows he finds himself talking about his fears and loss for the first time. She tells him a tale of how her family had suffered at the hands of soldiers and the pair talk all night.

The morning after, quite predictably I'm afraid, Freddie's back at the boarding house and nobody has any memory of his being at the fete. No-one has heard of Fabrissa or any of the other people he met at the party. His coat still hangs on the hall stand and his boots are not even wet, in spite of the winter snow.

By that time it's clear to the reader that Fabrissa is one of the Winter Ghosts of the title and yes, fancy that, she probably wasn't talking about the same war that triggered Freddie's mental health problems.  I won't spoil the tale for anyone who plans to read it, but if you've read Kate Mosse's other works you'll have worked out for yourself who Fabrissa is.

Confession time - I knew nothing of the relevant period of history before I read Labyrinth, and I learned a lot from it and Sepulchre, but The Winter Ghosts is really a book too far. Time for a new research topic Ms Mosse. You write excellent and engaging prose. Your books truly are gripping, page turners, but it would have been possible to tell the same tale in reference to a different era. Man's inhumanity to man is not limited to 14th century France.

The original version of The Winter Ghosts was published as The Cave in 2009, as part of the Quick Reads initiative, aimed at young adults. Its length and simplicity show through in the later book. If you're already familiar with Mosse's work you know what to expect. If you haven't read Labyrinth and Sepulchre this might be a good place to start, then move on to the meatier works to find out more about the topic.

Taxidermy

Just finished reading The Taxidermist's Daughter, by Kate Mosse and it's had quite an effect on me. I've read other Mosse titles (Labyrinth & Sepulchre spring to mind) so I knew she doesn't fight shy of a bit of unpleasantness, but this still had a few shock points to deliver. I won't spoil the story for you (I don't put spoilers in reviews) so it's hard to give you a detailed summary of what it's about. It's set in 1912, though for some reason the pictures in my mind were set much earlier than that. I don't think the actual date is important really. The story would have worked over a couple of centuries, I think.

Connie Gifford lives with her father in an isolated house on the edge of a marsh in the Sussex village of Fishbourne.  He's a taxidermist, though he prefers the title "stuffer of birds". He's also a drunk. Connie can't remember her childhood, owing to an accident that her father refuses to discuss. It left her with amnesia and occasional petit mal seizures. It's clear from the start that something is odd in the village. A weird ritual goes awry when strangers turn up to watch it, and hundreds of songbirds fly out of the church when someone opens the door. Lots of the birds die, setting the tone for the remainder of the book.

A few days later a woman's body is found near Connie's house, apparently drowned, but actually having been strangled by a length of taxidermy wire. Connie is concerned for her father's state of mind, because since the ritual he has been drinking more heavily than usual. Could he be responsible for the murder? And just who can Connie trust from the village and elsewhere?

I'd like to say that I didn't work it all out before the reveal, but that's not true. About a couple of hundred pages before the end I knew 'whodunnit' and I was pretty certain why. Let's face it, writing that kind of background makes it fairly obvious that the climax of the story must be connected to Connie's accident, though the actual details were grislier than I dreamed in my mind's eye. As a writer of sorts I am perturbed when I create truly cruel or gory scenes. Let's just say I'd be really worried if I'd described what Ms Mosse delivers in this book.

Having said that, I would recommend it as a creepy mystery book. There's a bit of history included, and an awful lot of technical detail about what's involved in the craft of taxidermy. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to carve a chicken again without qualms.