Rebecca Stott's Ghostwalk: Book Review
http://www.takingstuffapart.com/articles/1401/1/Rebecca-Stotts-Ghostwalk-Book-Review/Page1.html
Karen Reiser
Karen is a freelance writer and editor living in Northeast Ohio. By Karen Reiser
Published on 02/11/2008
While Rebecca Stott is no stranger to writing, Ghostwalk is her fiction debut. Ghostwalk combines mystery, romance, history, well-crafted prose, and, of course, a ghost.
Rebecca Stott's Ghostwalk
Novels that combine history with conspiracy and speculation have become increasingly popular over the past few years. Rebecca Stott has contributed her own addition to this genre. While it opens in murder mystery style, Stott's debut novel Ghostwalk is by no means a straightforward cozy. The action begins with the suspicious death that appears, at first, accidental. The story unfolds to reveal that nothing is what it seems to be.
Lydia Brooke: Ghostwriter
After neuroscientist Cameron Brown finds his mother, Elizabeth Vogelsang, drowned on her own property with a prism clenched in her fist, he asks Lydia Brooke, his former lover, to ghostwrite the final chapters of the Cambridge historian's biography on Isaac Newton and live in Elizabeth's home while she does so. As Lydia pours over Elizabeth's book and her research, she discovers Isaac Newton's alchemy experiments and dependence on aid of other Cambridge alchemists. Along with this, she discovers the mysterious circumstances that led to his eventually being elected a Cambridge fellow. Did Newton hide a secret much darker than his involvement with alchemy? Lydia begins to suspect that her friend's death may not have been an accident at all but an attempt to cover a dangerous secret of a man long dead.
Cameron Brown and Animal Rights
Lydia's research in Cambridge also reunites her with her former married lover Cameron Brown. While they seem to pick up where they ended years before, their relationship lacks trust, there is doubt and deception on both sides. Her involvement with him also puts her in danger as he is a target of an apparent animal rights group blamed for the violent attacks that involve killing animals and fatally wounding one of Brown's colleagues at his lab. Was Elizabeth's death neither an accident nor the work of ghost with a dark secret but instead a warning for Cameron? And if so, could Lydia be next?
Final Comments on Ghostwalk
A murder mystery, a ghost story, historical fiction, and even a love story, Ghostwalk crosses genres combining fact with fiction and historical investigation with romance. While Stott's prose effortlessly takes the reader from modern-day Cambridge to its seventeenth century counterpart, the pace tends to be slow at times. The reader who enjoys a well-told tale with secret societies and mysterious deaths will enjoy Rebecca Stott's debut, but those who enjoy fast-paced fiction and tidy conclusive endings will probably lose patience with the pace of Ghostwalk and how much is left to interpretation.
Lydia Brooke: Ghostwriter
After neuroscientist Cameron Brown finds his mother, Elizabeth Vogelsang, drowned on her own property with a prism clenched in her fist, he asks Lydia Brooke, his former lover, to ghostwrite the final chapters of the Cambridge historian's biography on Isaac Newton and live in Elizabeth's home while she does so. As Lydia pours over Elizabeth's book and her research, she discovers Isaac Newton's alchemy experiments and dependence on aid of other Cambridge alchemists. Along with this, she discovers the mysterious circumstances that led to his eventually being elected a Cambridge fellow. Did Newton hide a secret much darker than his involvement with alchemy? Lydia begins to suspect that her friend's death may not have been an accident at all but an attempt to cover a dangerous secret of a man long dead.
Cameron Brown and Animal Rights
Lydia's research in Cambridge also reunites her with her former married lover Cameron Brown. While they seem to pick up where they ended years before, their relationship lacks trust, there is doubt and deception on both sides. Her involvement with him also puts her in danger as he is a target of an apparent animal rights group blamed for the violent attacks that involve killing animals and fatally wounding one of Brown's colleagues at his lab. Was Elizabeth's death neither an accident nor the work of ghost with a dark secret but instead a warning for Cameron? And if so, could Lydia be next?
Final Comments on Ghostwalk
A murder mystery, a ghost story, historical fiction, and even a love story, Ghostwalk crosses genres combining fact with fiction and historical investigation with romance. While Stott's prose effortlessly takes the reader from modern-day Cambridge to its seventeenth century counterpart, the pace tends to be slow at times. The reader who enjoys a well-told tale with secret societies and mysterious deaths will enjoy Rebecca Stott's debut, but those who enjoy fast-paced fiction and tidy conclusive endings will probably lose patience with the pace of Ghostwalk and how much is left to interpretation.