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HOLY TERROR by Josephine Boyle

HOLY TERROR

by Josephine Boyle

Pub Date: Feb. 23rd, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-11824-4
Publisher: St. Martin's

The penny-dreadful title conceals a truly unusual ghost story. The house next door to Emily Wakelin's is haunted. That's why embroiderer Emily and her new husband, John, a London accountant, were able to get a charming place like Holly Cottage in such a hurry; the previous tenants decamped one step ahead of the specter. And there's none of this I-didn't-see-a-thing nonsense, either; George and Lady Abigail Curran, the couple who hold court at Holly House, make no bones about the ghost—Lady Curran in the clipped, imperious tones she uses for every social activity, her crippled husband with disarming enthusiasm for every new apparition. A commission to create an altarpiece picturing martyred Walter Tappett, obscure patron saint of the Little Hocking church, leads Emily to a series of slyly amusing run-ins with local dragon Margaret Witherley-Bashe, omnipotent head of the chapel committee. At the same time, she becomes more and more convinced that the restless spirit she's encountered at Holly House- -the hand that took her hand during her first visit, the sigh that prompted George Curran's approving outburst, the despairing moan in her own workroom—is Tappett's, and that his pleas for help and rest are merging his importunate personality with her own. But why can't the sainted Tappett rest in peace? With John stranded on a business trip to America, Emily is forced to confront a ghost whose history is twined around the church, the neighbors' family, and her own deepest beliefs. Boyle (Maiden's End, 1989, etc.) unfolds a ghost story that's spooky but not scary, thanks to the generous comic relief provided by grandes dames Curran and Witherley-Bashe—and a piquant emphasis on the spiritual nature of spirits in this Protestant corrective to Anne Rice.