An Inquiry into Love and Death by Simone St. James

26. – 773.) An Inquiry into Love and Death by Simone St. James – I do not think this book was intended for the average male reader. I can sum up my reasoning in a sentence. The slim lovely Jillian Leigh meets the tall, dark and handsome Inspector Drew Merriken and they encounter ghosts and ….

At their first meeting:

I looked down. His hand was on my arm. Something made my breath stop in my throat. I raised my eyes to his.

And just like that, something arced between us. My body flushed hot. His hand on me felt almost familiar, as if he’d touched me before. His gaze darkened as he looked at me, his grip flexed, and for just a second I felt a pull – so brief I thought I’d imagined it – as if he were about to draw me to him. In that second, I would have gone my body understanding before my mind could protest.

In the early 1920’s Jillian is a student at Somerville College for Women at Oxford. She is called to the village of Rothewell on the western coast of England to identify the body of her deceased uncle Toby and deal with his personal effects.

Toby was a renowned ghost hunter and was in Rothewell pursuing Walking John, a 17^th Century ghost, who has haunted the woods outside the village for almost three centuries. John Barrow had been a smuggler who died in terrible circumstances. No villager will venture into the woods at night.

Toby was staying in Walking John’s home, Barrow House, a lonely stone building on the edge of the woods at the time of his death.  He died from injuries suffered in a fall from the cliffs overlooking Blood Moon Bay.

Drew comes to Barrow House to make inquiries about Toby. There are suspicions his death was neither an accident nor suicide.

A fighter pilot during WW I Drew was emotionally damaged during the war.

With regard to ghosts Jillian approaches her first night alone at Barrow House with conviction:

           I did not believe in ghosts. Of course I didn’t – no

           sane person believed in ghosts. 

I believed in Oxford, and cobblestoned squares, and old bricks thick with ivy, and rainy days curled up reading books. I believed in my mother’s strong coffee and in the lonely, aching scent of early dawn before anyone else in my boardinghouse was awake. I believed in my favourite men’s cardigan and the way the wind felt on the back of my neck. I believed in life as it lay before me, spinning out slowly, day after day of warm springs and thurderstorms and laughter. These were the things I believed in.

Curious about Toby’s ghost hunting instruments she experiments with them especially the galvanscope which measures “the electric current generated by an object’s magnetic field”.

As a storm rages outside the house she is reading Toby’s journal when a crash causes her to jump. The fire wavers, lamps go out and there is another crash. Finding a shutter loose she goes outside. While attaching the shutter she “turned to see the garden gate fly open as if thrown by an unseen hand”. She is “overcome, in slick certainty, with sheer terror”. The shaken Jillian pulls her bed away from the window. Her certainty there are no ghosts has been shattered.

The intrepid Jillian assists the Inspector in his inquiries. There is a strong element of a young woman heading into danger alone.

I know my review reflects a prejudice with regard to romantic suspense and is condescending in tone. In my next post I am going to reflect on those personal issues.

I expect readers who enjoy romantic suspense mysteries will enjoy the book. The book is well written. Jillian is a striking character.

The cover is wonderfully designed combining photos to evoke the mood of the book(June 28/14)

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An Inquiry into Love and Death is my 16^th and final read in the 7^th Canadian Book Challenge which ends in half an hour. Shortly I will be summarizing my reading for the Challenge.