Bell Tower, The
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- £2.99
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
“The haunted-house theme is one of the most venerable in the genre, and Rayne has given it new life in this series, drawing again and again on the secrets contained within structures built originally to keep us safe”
Booklist Starred Review
A 400-year-old crime continues to menace the present in this spine-chilling tale of supernatural suspense.
When Nell West starts extending her Oxford antiques shop, she is not expecting to uncover strange fragments of its past: fragments that include a frightened message scribbled on old plasterwork, dated 1850 and referring to someone called Thaisa.
She also uncovers a mysterious link with a village on the Dorset coast – a village with an ancient bell tower and dark memories of a piece of music known locally as Thaisa’s Song. The sea is gradually encroaching on the derelict tower, but the old Glaum Bell still hangs in the lonely bell chamber and although it was silenced after an act of appalling brutality during the reign of Henry VIII, local people whisper that its chime is still occasionally heard.
As Nell and Michael Flint discover, the tower is mysteriously entangled with the story of Thaisa and a 400-year-old tragedy that has echoed down the centuries.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Rayne's middling sixth Haunted House mystery (after 2015's Deadlight Hall), Oxford professor Michael Flint and antiques dealer Nell West attend the revival of a festival known as St. Benedict's Revels in the Dorset village of Rede Abbas. All that is left of the old Benedictine monastery in Rede Abbas is the crumbling bell tower gradually being reclaimed by the sea. Local historian Gerald Orchard provides some history and some legends about the Glaum family, who donated the massive bell, and the church's suppression under Cromwell in the 1540s. At the heart of the tale is a mysterious, long-lost piece of music, "Thaisa's Song." Only villager Maeve Eynon knows the power of the song and some of its history from an old book retrieved from the ruins. Flint and West, who become intrigued by a fragment of music and a journal left by a monk in the 19th century, may become modern victims of an ancient wrong, but neither the mystery nor the ghost story generates much tension.
