Customer Reviews

Tower of Silence

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Tower Of Silence kicks off by introducing us to Selina March, a timid spinster who leads a sheltered, if not reclusive, life. Horrified by the prospect of Teind House, her home for the last four decades,having to be sold due to lack of money, Selina reluctantly decides to open a bed and breakfast. Crime writer Joanna Savile comes to stay while doing research for her latest novel. Teind House is close to Moy, an asylum for the criminally insane. Housed there is Mary Maskelyne,a notorious Sixties murderess.

I won't give too much away but a dark, devastating secret links the women. A tragedy that occurred in India nearly fifty years ago continues to impact the lives of many. Admittedly, the climax stretches credibility a tiny bit but you'll be too engrossed to care by then.
As well as being gripping and chilling, it shows the ripple effect a tragedy can have. If you've never read Sarah Rayne before, start now!

Mary Maskelyne, an infamous teenage murderess from the 1960s, now in her forties, is transferred to Moy, a remote Scottish institution for the criminally insane. Selina March, a colorless, proper spinster, short of money, converts her house to a bed and breakfast. Mystery writer Joanna Savile arrives in the village of Inchcape, near Moy, to do some research and specifically to interview Mary Maskelyne. The stage is now set for events that began with a shattering atrocity in the tumultuous India of the late 1940s to play out to their final conclusion.

Sarah Rayne is supposed to be a pseudonym for a writer who is already well-known in Britain for horror fiction. Remnants of this may be seen in some of the particularly gruesome events that take place in _Tower of Silence_, but they don't seem to be out of place or done just for shock value. I, for one, am glad that she decided to switch genres; her other novels may be well written but I probably would not have found them, and I would imagine that psychological suspense gives her much more scope for her talents. Her writing is superb and even poetic at times. Her characters, even the worst of them, are imagined from the inside, and vividly drawn. The portrayal of Mary Maskelyne, manipulative, narcissistic and attention-seeking, is one of the most chilling fictional examinations of the sociopathic mind that I have ever encountered. Other, more sympathetic characters include Emily Frost, the colorful and many-faceted daughter of one of the doctors at Moy, who volunteers to work with some of the patients; the sad, traumatized and extremely dangerous patient known as Pippa; and the attractive, strangely charismatic Joanna.

Unfortunately, for the most part Rayne does not seem to portray male characters nearly as vividly or sympathetically, although I did like Joanna's husband, the half-Hungarian Krzystof Kent. Also, she may push coincidence a bit too far for some people in bringing all of these people together in the same place, but if you're like me you will be too caught up in the plot and the characters' lives to care.

I have read all of Sarah Rayne's books and recommend them to
people who like to read odd little mystery stories with quaint
characters, unusual settings, with inriguing circumstances
occurring to them. She write charming books in a day when
gore and sex run rampantly through literature without a thought
to whether it enhances the story. I recommend ALL her books to
everyone but many would find her a bit slow moving and dull.
They would just be wrong about it for themselves, not for others.
Wish I knew her as a friend

I really enjoyed this "dark and stormy night"-type tale very much! Quite riveting! And, like her other books, there was definitely a layering to both the plot and characters. I was, however, a bit disappointed with the ending of this one. There were some characters that never got to interact that I wanted to see, and I thought that the biggest mystery of all (how did Selina, so very reclusive, come to have a goddaughter in the first place?!) went unsolved. So, while I was definitely hooked from the very beginning, there were some loose threads that I would have preferred to see tied up. Still, I am looking forward to reading other books by this very talented author!

This story is one sure to keep you reading to the very end. The story is set in the English countryside and is a psycological thriller that covers a long period of time with many facets all coming together to a very unexpected ending. I throughly enjoyed Sarah Rayne's story.