Haunt Me Still

February 22, 2010
Agreeing to direct Shakespeare's notoriously ill-starred “Scottish play” plunges scholar-sleuth Kate Stanley into a cauldron of trouble in this heady, occult-steeped thriller, the sequel to Interred with Their Bones
. The reclusive Lady Nairn, decades earlier the bewitching actress Janet Douglas, plans a production featuring priceless Macbeth
-linked antiquities, her own return to the stage, and—if Kate can find it—a rumored earlier version of the play said to include actual magic rites. No sooner does the cast assemble at Lady Nairn's Scottish castle, however, than all hell breaks loose. Kate's hallucinatory vision of the savaged body of Lady Nairn's granddaughter foreshadows two very real murders—with Kate a prime suspect. Carrell deftly uses literary scholarship as a springboard for her plot, especially the suspense-building leaps back to Shakespeare's day. She's less successful with the supernatural elements, which increasingly strain credulity, and an anemic romantic subplot.

March 15, 2010
The sequel to "Interred with Their Bones" finds academic-turned-director Kate Stanley and secret agent Ben Pearl catching up in a new production of "Macbeth" that will feature objects from the original play and that is being staged by a descendant of the infamous Scottish king. Many actors consider Shakespeare's play to be cursed. While Kate isn't superstitious, she starts to wonder when she sees a vision of a young girl bound and gagged and when one of the cast members turns up brutally murdered a few days later. The action eventually picks up as Kate chases around England and on to America, searching for an original "Macbeth" manuscript that seems to have strong ties to one of England's most famous occult scholars. VERDICT The slow start and overload of supernatural elements makes this sequel a disappointment after Carrell's sharp debut. However, readers who enjoy historical and literary thrillers and are willing to put up with an occult subplot may be interested. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 12/09.]Jessica E. Moyer, Univ. of Minnesota, Coll. of Ed. & Human Development, Minneapolis

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2010
The quest for knowledge, particularly forbidden knowledge, is at the heart of this literary thriller based on the premise that Shakespeares Macbeth originally included magical rites omitted by the playright after a young actor died before the plays premiere. Acclaimed actress Lady Nairn recruits Kate Stanley, academic-turned-Shakespearean-director, to find the original manuscript and stage the play, immersing Kate in a deadly hunt involving the occult. Trying to save Nairns granddaughter from unseen forces that also want the manuscript, Kate travels from Scotland to London to New York and back, with timely assistance from her former lover, security expert Ben Pearl. The foreboding atmosphere, during which brutal ritual murders are committed, is interrupted by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century accounts that build the case for the novels thesis, based on Carrells considerable research (as explained in an afterword). While Shakespeare scholars may quibble (as they did with the authors previous novel, Interred with Their Bones, 2007) and while explication of arcane information occasionally impedes action, general readers are likely to be swept along as the level of danger increases, with the ongoing relationship between Kate and Ben a bonus.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)