The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths

Read May 2019. Published 5th March 2019.

Clare Cassidy is an English teacher at Talgarth High, specialising in Victorian Gothic literature. She is an avid diary keeper, committing her deepest feelings to the pages of her journals.
The school where she teaches has an unusual history, because it is built in the grounds of the former home of one of her favourite Gothic authors, R.M. Holland, and it encompasses the old creepy manor house itself, including the author's study. Stories of spectral goings on at Talgarth have cropped up over the years, with some students and staff claiming to have actually seen the ghost of R.M.Holland's wife, who may have committed suicide there.
Clare is fascinated with R.M. Holland, especially his most famous, Gothic horror The Stranger, and has ideas to eventually publish a book about him - indeed, the connection with The Stranger is what attracted her to Talgarth High in the first place.

When one of Clare's fellow teaching staff, and close friend, is found murdered, with a line from The Stranger left by her bloody corpse, Clare is horrifed to discover that real life is echoing the story-line of her favourite book. This will not be the last murder.
The police suspect that the killer may be someone Clare knows, and this suspicion becomes a real possibility when she finds some writing in her diaries - writing that is not her own.

Can the mystery be solved before time runs out?

I have not read one of Elly Griffiths' books before, but I am mightily impressed with this one.
The story is told from three perspectives - Clare herself; Georgia, Clare's daughter; and Detective Sergeant Harbinder Kaur, who is leading the murder inquiry - and is interspersed with consecutive excerpts from The Stranger, which relate to each stage of the contemporary murder investigation. I really liked that The Stranger is also repeated at the ending of the book, this time in its entirety, so you get to read the terrifying conclusion of the tale - very Shirley Jackson/Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected it is too.

This is a delicious mix of Gothic horror and contemporary murder-mystery, that will keep you guessing until the triumphant end, and I could not put it down once I had started.
I will certainly be looking out for more Elly Griffiths books in the future.

Highly recommended for those who like a murder-mystery with supernatural undertones, The Stranger Diaries is recently out in paperback, so go pick up a copy now!