Benjamin Evans - Author

Modern writing is still alive! Here is a book by a contemporary author that isn’t smart-arse, self-conscious or written for people who shop in Tescos. Unfortunately it happens to be set in the 17th Century Danish Court and be written by a novelist who’s pen is inspired by the worlds of rural Norfolk, but hey, at least its good, and for more real than the other genre fiction cluttering the shelves of Waterstones. The reason this is good is because it doesn’t read like a historical book. In a sense it doesn’t read of a book trapped in a time or a setting, because its characterisation is so good and its themes so universal. Ostensibly it is a love story between the lutenist of King Christian IV and the companion of Kirsten, the King’s estranged wife. However, this is by far the lease interesting part of the book, and one that you seem that Tremain has included to shape her historical and lyrical flourishes around. Romantic fiction this is not. Peter Claire is our lutenist, who takes resid...

A doctor answers a call from a local stately home, Hundreds Hall, where the young maid has been taken ill. However, on examination it appears there is nothing wrong with her, apart from an uneasy feeling about her new employment, in this house that ‘gives her the creeps’ in which she thinks she ‘will die of fright sometimes.’ Our rational doctor is sympathetic and prescribes some simple stomach mixture, but is taken in by the grand mansion in which he finds himself, and its occupants, the surly Roderick, his pragmatic sister Caroline and their rather glamorous mother Mrs Ayres. Soon he starts to treat the former for an war-injury to his leg. However, there appears to be something sinister happening to the family, particularly to Roderick, as he straggles with the upkeep of a stately home going to the dogs, at the same time beginning to have nightmarish visions at night. One by one these visions intensify and pass to each member of the family, with increasingly tragic results. Can our c...