The Diabolical Bones (A Brontë Sisters Mystery)
This second in the Brontë Sisters Mysteries is for readers eager to be drenched in all things gothic. Bella Ellis (pseudonym for Rowan Coleman) has carefully adhered to the known demeanors of the sisters and their brother Branwell while adding a crime subplot. It’s December 1845, and frigid winds are whipping around the snow-covered Yorkshire moors. The mood is anxious within Haworth Parsonage: Charlotte, Emily, and Anne have sent their poems to a publisher and nervously await a response, while Branwell longs for letters from his former mistress Mrs. Robinson and drowns his sorrows at the pub.
What they need is a distraction. It arrives when their housekeeper, Tabby Aykroyd, reveals that a body has been found at Top Withens Hall, an ancient structure sitting atop the moorland, and that Clifton Bradshaw, the hall’s owner, refuses to inter the bones until spring. When the siblings trudge there to convince Bradshaw to allow a Christian burial in the parsonage cemetery, they encounter a household haunted by ghosts from thirteen years earlier, when Bradshaw’s wife died. The bones found within his chimney are a child’s, and the sisters want to find out whodunit. Bradshaw, a man rumored to have sold his soul to the devil, is a likely suspect.
Many classic Gothic elements – ghosts, a forbidding house, family secrets, and obsessive love – swirl together in a complex brew, and the supernaturally tinged atmosphere is drawn from the Brontë oeuvre, particularly Wuthering Heights and Emily Brontë’s evocative poetry. The overall effect is creepy without being outright frightening. Befittingly, Emily is an irresistible character, with her love for the moors and amusing penchant for bluntness. Ellis also works in issues of the day such as women’s independence and anti-Irish prejudice. The novel should satisfy anyone seeking to traverse the landscapes where these famous sisters lived and took inspiration.
