Haunt Me Still [Hardcover]

I really loved Jennifer Lee Carrell's first Kate Stanley mystery/thriller, "Interred With Their Bones," about the search for a missing Shakespeare play; this one, about the search for both a missing earlier version of a key scene in "Macbeth" and a missing 15-year-old girl, not so much.

What is it, I wonder, about all these disappointing second novels from authors whose first novels made a huge, huge splash--Julia Glass and Joshua Ferris, for example, and now Carrell: Are they pushed relentlessly by agents and publishers to get the next one into print while their name and fame is still hot? Or were they just trying too hard to top themselves and it showed?

In the notes at the back of this book Carrell credits her editors and agent with nursing her through "a writers' block of cursed proportion." Maybe they should have just left her alone to work it out in its own good time. Because the result, while as erudite and intricate a puzzle as its predecessor, is a convoluted mess. It's overstuffed with characters but little character development--and hard enough to keep them all straight, let alone get invested in what happens to them. Actually there's just too much of just about everything: witches and witchery, curses and cauldrons, rites and rituals, murders and murderers, myths, mirrors, magic, madness, mayhem, manuscripts, a multiplicity of crazed killers, kidnappers, knives, guns, explosions, whispered threats, 16th Century history, a constant parade of nonstop narrow escapes with lots of racing and chasing hither and thither around the heather and down dark corridors and even across the Atlantic, with rarely ever any slowing of pace where the reader could catch a breath long enough to figure out what's going on or--by about the halfway point--even care anymore. Sad, to say, it was a chore just to plow through it all.

`Haunt Me Still,' the sequel to the highly successful (and satisfying) `Interred in Their Bones,' is Jennifer Lee Carrell's latest offering in the romantic suspense genre.

Unfortunately, it seems more difficult to write that second novel in a series than the first. Readers' expectations run high, and sometimes the muse just fails. Carrell's novel lacks the panache and force of her earlier book.

`Haunt Me Still' picks up Shakespearian scholar and theatrical director Kate Stanley on her way to Scotland to direct a private production of `Macbeth.' And she is heading straight into the traditional 1950-ish suspense novel set up - lonely castle in the Highlands, antique daggers, witches, and the refrain `Don't go up the hill alone.' Right. Add to that a still lovely aged retired actress, a kidnapping, the occasional bloody body to stumble over, a lost manuscript, and all the usual romantic suspense elements have come together. And often it makes for a good, if predictable, read.

However, much of `Haunt Me Still' deals with the myths surrounding `Macbeth' the play. There are times in fiction when background can be a burden for author and reader alike, and that occurs here. Carrell spends far too much time on historical exposition and too little on character development.

Another problem that authors too often face with the second book in a series is what to do with the romantic interest developed in the first book. Readers of `Interred with Their Bones' may remember Ben Pearl the security expert that Kate rode happily off into the sunset with. Alas, it turned out to be a bumpy ride. Put bluntly, Ben has dumped Kate and moved on; Kate hasn't. Ben reappears here as a peripheral character. But then to be honest, most of the characters seem secondary to the historical context.

For those of us who need to know what happened next to Kate Stanley, `Haunt Me Still' may be required reading. Carrell is a literate author (not to be scoffed at these days) and her writing style is pleasant; her historical research, reliable.

But be warned: this book did not come together well into a cohesive whole.

Three and one half stars - which translates to - it's not as good as it could be, but better than so many other books that reach print. However, readers might want to wait for the paper edition.

This book was a major disappointment to me because I was very much looking forward to a clever mystery based on Shakespeare's Macbeth. What I found was a tortuously improbable plot that managed to make Shakespeare buffoonish and dull.

Kate, our protagonist, is summoned to Scotland, supposedly for dinner with a formally famous actress, Lady Nairn, who collects Macbeth memorabilia. Upon Kate's arrival, she discovers that she is being asked to direct the "cursed" play at the castle using this collection. Meanwhile, Kate's cast has already been selected and is assembling shortly. Of course, sinister figures lurk and eavesdrop, and not long afterwards, all the actors find themselves menaced by Machiavellian villains bent on stealing sacred objects and kidnapping Lily, the granddaughter of Lady Nairn. Kate becomes embroiled in the scenario when she finds a mysterious patterned blade, unscathed by time, on a sacred hilltop and has a vision of Lily, bound and gagged. Despite all the warnings, Lily is stolen away at a Scottish festival, and then Lady Nairn refuses to call the police and urges Kate, a scholar of stage history, to save the wayward adolescent. Ultimately the villains make their desires known by hanging clues off dead bodies, whispering threats in sacred spaces, and leaving mysterious phone calls for Kate. She is to track down an earlier version of Macbeth in which Shakespeare has purposefully included a rite of black magic that the villains want to reenact to achieve great power. Kate embarks on a wild and thoroughly implausible adventure that includes a ritual Aztec sacrifice in the British Museum, a gunfight during a production of the Phantom of the Opera, a wade through an icy cold loch (during which our underdressed heroine does not suffer from frostbite or hypothermia), and a search of a ruins in the middle of nowhere that leads to a tangled and, well, silly ending.

I couldn't fathom Lady Nairn at all. She loses her beloved granddaughter to people she suspects of killing her husband, and she asks a Shakespeare scholar to find the child. Then, she deliberately only tells Kate about one of the people she believes to be involved, saving the more evil villain for a later revelation. The former actress is a Wiccan priestess, but, when strangers interrupt her rites (held on her property), she just leaves. She doesn't ask who they are or call the police. She goes home to bed. The novel accepts the idea of powerful magic, both good and bad, but Lady Nairn never consults a seer to find out where her granddaughter is. She doesn't recognize a close relative until last minute and seems fairly ineffectual as a guardian of a teenager. One starts to wonder if she doesn't want to be rid of her granddaughter rather than save her.

After celebrating Shakespeare's poetry in the novel, we are supposed to accept that Shakespeare's brilliance may be the result of black magic. Then we must listen to Kate's long speech about how he used his infernally given talent in a proper way and that makes him a genius still. (Glad she redeemed the Bard.) We have to accept that Kate can unravel rather silly clues in secret missives written by long dead nineteenth century actors, who, for unexplained reasons, have happened upon the material at some point. We must marvel that the police are so inept that Kate is capable of slipping by them whenever a scene erupts in a public place. Page after page of incredible plot twists begins to weigh the whole work down.

Lastly, and this point is perhaps negligible in comparison to the rest, but Kate is invited to dinner only. She does not bring a change of clothes and then is asked to stay overnight. As far as I can tell, the entire adventure happens almost exclusively in that set of clothes. She never sleeps (OK she naps occasionally) and never takes a shower or brushes her teeth, even though she rolls down hills, gets covered in blood, wades through water, etc. She has to be one of the most hygienically challenged characters I've ever read about in any mystery.

In the store, I had a choice between this book and a biography of Lewis Carroll. In retrospect, I should have bought the biography because at least in it, any nonsense would be intentional.

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