Watching the Ghosts

July 30, 2012
A former insane asylum, recently converted into an apartment complex in Eborby, Yorkshire, provides the backdrop for Ellis’s middling fourth mystery featuring Det. Insp. Joe Plantagenet (after 2011’s Kissing the Demons). When a six-year-old girl, the daughter of solicitor Melanie Hawkes, goes missing at Havenby Hall while Melanie is looking into strange happenings there, Plantagenet investigates. Meanwhile, a series of ritualistic burglaries by a man nicknamed “The Builder” disturbingly mimic notorious murders committed by Peter Brockmeister, who allegedly died at Havenby Hall years before. The unsettling dreams of one of the burglary victims, Lydia Brookes, to whom Plantagenet is attracted, may be the key to solving mysteries of past and present. While the revelations are satisfyingly creepy, the elaborate contortions and coincidences they require lessen their impact. Readers may find themselves turning the pages back to figure out what just happened rather than turning them forward to see what happens next.