TOWER OF SILENCE by Sarah Rayne

Something has got to be done about this woman. Her name is Sarah Rayne and she writes the absofreakinglutely most horrifying set pieces going.

Take this, for instance. Fourteen-year old Mary Maskelyne, after a short lifetime of emotional abuse from her parents, has murdered her father by driving a spike into his brain from the base of his skull. She has bound his corpse to her mother, face to face. When Leila Maskelyne awakens she sees her husband’s dead face only inches from her own.

“And then realization slowly dawned in her face, and with it had come panic and revulsion, and that had been the best moment of all. Mary had laughed once again to see those emotions on her mother’s face, although she had instantly put her hand over her mouth to push the laughter back down. But it had been a moment to store away and remember.”

There’s a reason, mad though it is, behind Mary’s act. It has a lot to do with a group of British children who were captured by Indian separatists in 1947. The Indians threatened to kill the young ones if certain political demands were not met. I don’t want to peel too much away. Rayne’s technique is to cut back and forth from current days to this night of horror. I like the way she suddenly, quietly and unexpectedly plops revelations in front of you and then glides along, leaving you going back to re-read what just happened in a state of surprise.

The modern part of the story features Selina March, a spinster in her late 50s. She’s timid and bound to Teind House in the Scottish village of Inchcape. It’s not that she’s particularly happy in the house where she grew up, but she has committed several murders there and you know how that creates a tie. The house is also a couple of miles from Moy, the hospital for the criminally insane that is now the permanent residence of Mary Maskelyne. We suspect that there must be a connection between the two women, and that becomes a certainty when we learn that Selina survived the massacre in India and Mary’s older sister died in it.

If the book has a weakness—and that depends on how you look at it—it’s an over-abundance of coincidences. But that’s also part of its strength. This novel is a throwback to the glory days of the Sensation Novels of the 1860s, fiction that was intended to appeal to the emotions of the new reading classes and stimulate sensations rather than thoughts. Sensation novels like THE WOMAN IN WHITE, EAST LYNNE, and LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET were early psychological thrillers and huge bestsellers. I still get a kick out of them and if you enjoy the novels of Arthur Conan Doyle and Wilkie Collins—both of whom wrote about evil deeds done in India—you’ll probably like TOWER OF SILENCE.

And by the way, the scene referenced above, with Mary and her mother, is not the most horrific one in the book. Imagine dead bodies being lugged to the top of a tower and placed on a platform running around the outside of the wall. Now imagine vultures swooping down for a freshly killed feast. Now imagine human screams emanating from the top of the tower. Now imagine the details I’m leaving out.

Now start reading.