Monday 26 October 2015

'The Taxidermist's Daughter' - Kate Mosse



With the days getting colder and the darkness encroaching earlier, there are two genres that dominate; crime and horror. Halloween is less than a week away and I thought it was time to start giving myself the creeps in a way that only a good novael can. Out came Kate Mosse's The Taxidermist's Daughter. I am a little ashamed to admit that I have never read a Kate Mosse novel before, not only because I have heard nothing but good reviews about her writing, but also because she is from Chichester, a regular haunt of mine (if you'll excuse the pun). She was born and continues to live in the historical city, known for its Roman heritage, and her new novel, The Taxidermist's Daughter, takes place as well as in the nearby village of Fishbourne.

The plot is eery from the start, when the daughter of an alcoholic taxidermist follows her father to the churchyard late at night where he meets with other men for a reason known only to them. When a woman's body is found close to her house, Connie Gifford worries that her father has a part to play in it, especially when he disappears. Harry Woolston is also concerned when his father fails to come home, and when he coincidentally meets Connie, the two instantly feel a connection and when they find out that their fathers knew each other, they join together to find out exactly what has happened to them and who is sending mysterious letters.

Mosse keeps her readers constantly in the dark, dangling them as Connie conveniently had an accident as a child and has no memory of her former life. She knows that it is relevant to the mysterious events around her, and as her memories starts to return, the story all starts to come together. The final pieces of the puzzle begin to become obvious by this point, but this is towards the end of the book not long before it is revealed to you by Mosse anyway; and though it might be easy to guess the man involved as well as the person behind the murders, you could not be prepared for how brutal the murders actually are. You're left asking yourself if it is justice or revenge gone too far.

The novel really enters into the deep macabre, but Mosse uses romance to break this up. I personally never appreciate a cliched relationship in a book, and love at first sight would certainly fall into this category, but Connie and Harry's relationship seems necessary. I also tend to prefer an unhappy end to a crime/horror novel (what I call a 'Stephen King' ending), but this story has to finish with a little bit of hope for its characters, and is also not entirely without devastation so I can let that one slide.

This is a great novel to start the season with, and is just one of many horror novels to be reviewed on the blog in the upcoming months.

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