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DARK TIDES
by Chris Ewan
Minotaur, December 2015
440 pages
$25.99
ISBN: 1250074428


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

In 1995 on Halloween, or as they term it on the Isle of Man where this book is set, Hop-tu-naa, Claire Cooper accompanied her mother to the home of her mother's creepy employer, Edward Caine and his even creepier young son. Reluctantly, but then with increasing power, Claire performs the ritual song, one which has some sort of sinister relevance to the Caine household, is rewarded with a banknote and goes off home with her mother, sensing she's done something quite awful. Her mother is required to return to work and sets off for the Caines. She is never seen again.

Claire is convinced that Edward Caine was responsible for her mother's death. Nevertheless, she manages to grow into a no more than ordinarily distressed teenager. She has a group of friends who make a point of meeting on Halloween to engage in an edgy game of dares and forfeits. One such evening, in an effort (or so they claim) to exorcise Claire's burden of loss, they break into Edward Caine's house, which they believe is vacant. It isn't, and their prank goes terribly wrong.

In the years to follow, someone will stalk and kill individual members of the group, making the deaths appear accidental, but leaving an unmistakable indication that they are no such thing.

Chris Ewan is the author of The Good Thief series of thrillers, an attractive set of ingeniously plotted and generally genial accounts of capers in major world cities. This is nothing like that. The Manx world is dark and haunted; there is little genial about it. Nor is there much ingenious about it either. The experienced reader will have had a very strong hunch about the identity of the killer long before the reveal. The Halloween trappings are not invigorated by calling the event Hop-tu-naa, though the ritual song for the occasion is interesting.

But the real problem is a structural one. In what appears to be an attempt to increase suspense and divert attention away from the fairly obvious, Ewan plays fast and loose with time in the first part of the book and introduces that dread device, the musings of the killer in italics, in the second. For some reason, this person uses the second person to describe what has been done. Thus, Part One begins with a Prologue (of course it does), curiously set at the latest possible date, Hop-tu-naa, 2014. Then we go back thirteen years, forward two, back eight, forward eight, and finally back again to the year after Claire's mother disappeared. The reason for all this hopping about is not evident.

Part Two, on the other hand, proceeds in an orderly enough fashion, Hop-tu-naa year by year from 2011 to 2014. Each occasion sees the original group diminish by one or more of its members. The survivors seem intent on continuing their annual observance, however, as is usually the case in tales of this sort. Readers of horror fiction might themselves consider emigrating rather than risk another dare or forfeit on Halloween, but will be grateful that the idea never crosses the minds of the endangered cast. Finally, just two are left and we know the end is at hand. And just in case we really are a bit dim, the italicized thoughts of the killer are there helpfully to remind us.

The motivation of all the characters remains, like Man itself in November, obscure.

All this being said, Ewan can write very well indeed and if the reader can overlook some of the creakier conventions, the individual Hop-tu-naas are really quite scary. I would hold this one till next October, when it will go down very well as a seasonal read.

§ Yvonne Klein is a writer, translator, and retired college English professor who lives in Montreal.

Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, January 2016

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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