The Haunting of Avis Lovelock
1898. Avis Lovelock is a professional sceptic who earns her living performing ‘insights’ into the lives of audience members, really just interpreting what she sees. Her greatest delight off stage is debunking spiritualists.
After a séance she is approached by Carlton Brooksbank, an American businessman, who offers her a first-class crossing to New York on the liner Excambion. The ship is to be sold, but rumours of hauntings are causing the buyers to hesitate. Avis’s role is to disprove the rumours.
Also aboard are the twin spiritualists Gideon and Rachel Duquesne, according to Avis “the biggest liars in Europe”. But as they perform their séances, she struggles to unmask their tricks. Things are complicated for her by visions of water filling her cabin, and she is regularly interrupted by the ghost of her dead sister. When a crew-member dies in strange circumstances, Avis has to work with the Duquesnes to solve the mystery while still determined to discredit them.
The author, M. K. Hardy, is in fact two people, Morag Hannah and Erin Hardee, and they must have had great fun writing this intriguing tale. Avis’s crusade is to prevent the exploitation of vulnerable people by spiritualists, but when she exposes the frauds it is with Avis that the victims are angry.
Avis is a well-drawn character, as are the Duquesnes, who are an enigma difficult to interpret. There is a lively cast of passengers and crew, only a few of whom support Avis’s viewpoint. Descriptions of the ship and the differences between first class, third class, the crew’s quarters and the engine room set the scene nicely. The lead-up to the death is a little prolonged, but in general it moves along at a good pace. An enjoyable read.
