Themis-Athena's Garden of Books

Hooray -- what a relief to FINALLY be in the hands of an author who understands the absolutely terrifying effect of both a plague epidemic and the occult -- individually and, even more so, when experienced in combination.  After a week's worth of reading books with (alleged) supernatural and / or mystery and / or horror elements that went anywhere from "nice but kind of nondescript" to "infantile drivel", it feels like with this book and yesterday's impromptu revisit of Agatha Christie's Regatta Mystery and Other Stories, Halloween Bingo is finally beginning in earnest.

Obviously, it helps that this book is narrated by Derek Jacobi -- and I think it says a lot that not even Simon Vance's narration of two of the Agatha Christie stories managed to get too much into the way of my enjoyment -- but by all the gods in bingo heaven, I sorely needed some quality grown-up, well thought out writing, and Hawksmoor is delivering just that ... in spades.