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Overview
In The Stranger House, Reginald Hill takes a break from his Dalziel and Pascoe series, and delivers a stunning stand-alone novel full of suspense, romance, history, and an exploration of the sometimes twisted side of the human psyche.The tiny village of Illthwaite in Cumbria, England, seems to be the kind of place where nothing much has happened for the last few centuries. But the two young strangers who arrive there on the same dank autumn day soon find out that appearances are deceptive.
Samantha Flood and Miguel Madero have absolutely nothing in common -- except a burning desire to find out more about possible connections between Illthwaite and their families. Their way forward is beset by deceit, obstruction, mystery, violence, and love as they struggle to discover who they really are.
A cast of finely drawn characters, a powerful sense of landscape, a complex and multilayered story, and an explosive climax all combine to make this a novel difficult to put down, impossible to forget.
Synopsis
For more than five hundred years weary travelers have been coming to the Stranger House—an out-of-the-way inn in the tiny village of Illthwaite in Cumbria, England. Now two very different visitors have arrived here on the same dank and dreary autumn afternoon, each one driven by curiosity . . . and perilous purpose.
Australian math wizard Samantha "Sam" Flood is here searching for answers to a disturbing family mystery. Miguel Madero, former novice priest-turned-historical scholar, is exploring the links between an ancestor's bizarre disappearance and the people of Illthwaite. But Sam and Mig are not welcome in this town of secrets and silences. And when their personal quests become strangely intertwined, two determined seekers will find themselves drawn ever deeper into a fetid morass of deceit, mystery, and violence as they race to uncover the shocking truth about who they really are.
Publishers Weekly
Fans of the witty Dalziel/Pascoe police procedurals (Good Morning, Midnight, etc.) by Diamond Dagger-winner Hill may be nonplussed by this stand-alone, a mix of historical mystery, gothic romance, ghost story and tutorial on religion and Norse mythology. Samantha "Sam" Flood, an Australian mathematics whiz, visits the isolated British village of Illthwaite before attending graduate school at Cambridge, hoping to discover the origins of her grandmother who emigrated from the place as a child. Miguel "Mig" Madero, a former novice priest now a history scholar, seeks the link between an ancestor who disappeared during the Spanish Armada defeat and a Catholic Illthwaite family. The villagers, quirky and devious, seem to know more than they'll reveal. Sam and Mig, initially antagonistic, join forces when their quests intersect. Spanning four centuries and related by several narrators, who slowly clarify the mystery, the book is too long and repetitive and seasoned with wild coincidences. Still, the engrossing historical background, especially Elizabeth I's campaign to eliminate English Catholicism, more than compensates. Agent, Caradoc King at A.P. Watt (U.K.). (Oct.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewNot only is Reginald Hill's The Stranger House an impossible-to-categorize novel, being equal parts mystery, psychological thriller, supernatural horror, and historical fiction. This story, about two strangers looking for answers in a remote northern English village, is also impossible to put down.
Samantha "Sam" Flood is a young Australian seeking clues to her past. Her grandmother came from England under horrific conditions (an orphan, she became pregnant at 12 and died shortly after giving birth to Sam's father), but the circumstances of her journey have been lost in time. During her search, Sam meets Miguel Madero, a Spanish scholar doing research on English Catholics during the Reformation. Their investigations lead them to the Stranger House, an old hostelry located in the secluded village of Illthwaite ("an ill name for an ill place"), an area steeped in legends, superstitions, and deeply buried secrets. The two outsiders' inquiries lead them into dangerous territory as they begin to uncover a gruesome story of perversion, betrayal, and murder. "The door to the past opens north," one local cryptically warns. "The devil lives there."
Although a dramatic departure from Hill's award-winning Dalziel and Pascoe Yorkshire Police saga (Good Morning, Midnight; Death's Jest-Book; Dialogues of the Dead; et al.), The Stranger House is still very much a classic Reginald Hill work. Featuring intensely opinionated and brilliantly multi-layered characters, unfathomably deep plotlines, and Hill's biting wit, this dark exploration into the dust-covered skeletons of a village's shadowy past is utterly readable. Paul Goat Allen