After finishing Never Look Back, and without time to trawl through the bookcases (of which I have a few) the book closest to hand was The Winterghosts by Kate Mosse so that was what I started. The book cover was pretty and made of nice paper, however that’s about as good as it got. I have never read her books before, and based on this one I won’t be rushing to read her much longer ones.
A novella rather than a novel, the story is about a man who lost his brother in the war, has a breakdown, goes travelling to get over it, has a Misery style car accident (unfortunately without a Kathy Bates madwomen at the end) goes to a dinner full of ghosts, tracks down said ghosts final resting place and this restores his mental health.
The story itself was very predictable and had no surprise element at all, plus if I’m honest I really couldn’t care less about the main man, the ghosts he saw, or how they died. I only finished the book this morning and can’t even remember the name of the main character, and not even my memory is that bad.
However, I can see why people like her books. The writing itself was very good. The descriptions of the area were beautiful, and I enjoyed the fact that it felt very different to the usual books I read. For certain bits of the writing the word evocative springs to mind, however that was ruined by the tedium of the story.
I’m assuming that this is not a good introduction into Kate Mosse as I know she is very popular. As an author speaking at the Crime Writing Festival though she seems an odd choice. I can’t really see how she fits within my definition of a crime novel as this was certainly no ‘who dunnit’, or police procedural. Overall a very disappointing book, and I’m glad I didn’t go for her longer ones, but then maybe that’s the problem! It would be interesting to know how this compares to her other books if anyone has read them?
A crime readers blog 