THE TALE OF HALCYON CRANE (Wendy Webb)

Back in the day, when my hair was still brown and I could climb stairs without a handrail, I couldn't get enough of the likes of H.P. Lovecraft and Bram Stoker.  Frank Langella (remember him in "Dracula"?) was sexy and "Night of the Living Dead" and "Dark Shadows" were a required viewing for anyone who appreciated campy, quality horror.  Since then my tastes have run the gamut of classic literature, suspense, medical thrillers, chick-lit, women's fiction, and cozies, but I 've been interested in very few ghost stories, until now.

Today's young adults thrill to sexy vampires and shape changers, so this story might not interest them.  The Tale of Halcyon Crane is a good, old-fashioned ghost story with just the right combination of terror and practicality, enough to make it almost believable.  Webb unfolds her story with precise timing and just the right amount of suspense. The reader leaps to one conclusion, then to another, only to be lulled back to reality before being confronted again with the possibility that maybe they really are out there, watching and waiting.

Thirty-something Hallie James was raised by her father Thomas in Bellingham, WA after the tragic death of her mother in a house fire 30 years before.  As her father is dying of Alzheimer's she receives an envelope in the mail from Will Archer, an attorney on Great Manitou Island, Minnesota.  Inside the envelope are a letter from Archer informing her of the death of Madlyn Crane along with a letter to Hallie from Madlyn Crane, written just before her recent sudden death from a heat attack.  In the letter Madlyn tells Hallie that she is her mother and that she has believed for 30 years that her daughter and husband died in a tragic boating accident.  A chance picture of Hallie and her father in a newspaper article led Madlyn back to her daughter.  When Hallie arrives on Great Manitou after the death of her father, she meets with suspicion and apparent dislike on the part of many of the island's inhabitants.  She soon discovers why: her father was the main suspect in the death of Hallie's childhood friend, Julie, disappearing along with Hallie before he could be arrested for the crime.  Hallie decides to stay on the island for a few days to live in the house she inherited from her mother, the house that she lived in as a child, but of which she has no memory.  She soon starts hearing voices and experiencing disappearing jewelry, touches from unknown hands, and TV and lights turned inexplicably on and off.  She also discovers that she has inherited a very old housekeeper, Iris, who smells vaguely of dirt and rose petals and claims to have know her family for almost 100 years!

I won't tell you any more about the plot, but suffice it to say, I couldn't put this book down until I finished it.  It's perfect reading for a rainy November day.  It might be even better during a blizzard.  If you are looking for gore and guts, skip it, but if you like a gripping psychological thriller complete with graveyards, mediums, and ghosts, try this one.