Fyneshade
I greatly enjoyed Griffin’s series of historical crime novels, Kitty Peck and The Music Hall Murders and its successors. Here the scale is far smaller, the few characters shown almost exclusively within the titular mansion, its gardens, and secret locked wings. We are in the Derbyshire Peak District in an unspecified year, and our story is narrated in the voice of Marta, glamorous but uncanny. As the book starts she has just procured her own abortion through charms and witchcraft. She then arrives at Fyneshade as the new governess assigned to Grace – a child with learning difficulties who scarcely speaks and is looked after solely by servants, her mother being dead and father mysteriously absent. A dashing son of the family appears, but due to some past misdemeanour he is not allowed inside the house, though this does not stop him from seducing the willing Marta.
After a slow-burning first half, we realise that despite her supernatural powers, Marta has allowed an infatuation to get the better of her judgement. There is tight suspense in the later chapters as we anticipate the comeuppance to be met by our leading lady, but are led up blind alleys. Grace’s character turns out to be unexpectedly manipulative. As I expect from Griffin, there are evocative descriptions of behaviours and settings, and even smells, but personally I did find this narrator’s calculating self-belief a little less interesting than Kitty’s wit and self-doubt. Marta ultimately comes unstuck, but she lives to be a governess again. One question distracted me – we are told that she has French heritage, so I do not understand why she uses the Italian or Polish name Marta rather than the French Marthe. Clever and allusive, Fyneshade remains a very cool take on the Gothic, deserving to do well.
