The Shape Of Darkness by Laura Purcell

 

The Shape Of Darkness by Laura Purcell.

Published 21st January 2021 by Raven Books.

From the cover of the book:

As the age of the photograph dawns in Victorian Bath, silhouette artist Agnes is struggling to keep her business afloat. 

Still recovering from a serious illness herself, making enough money to support her elderly mother and her orphaned nephew Cedric has never been easy, but then one of her clients is murdered shortly after sitting for Agnes, and then another, and another... Why is the killer seemingly targeting her business?

Desperately seeking an answer, Agnes approaches Pearl, a child spirit medium lodging in Bath with her older half-sister and her ailing father, hoping that if Pearl can make contact with those who died, they might reveal who killed them.

But Agnes and Pearl quickly discover that instead they may have opened the door to something that they can never put back...

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Laura Purcell is one of my favourite authors, and her books are always auto-buys for me, so I was in a state of high excitement when this little beauty was announced last year. I was finally able to cradle a hardback copy of The Shape of Darkness in my hot little hands a couple of days ago, and once I had admired the breath-taking beauty of its cover, the reading began in earnest. I ended up devouring the whole deliciously dark novel in only two sittings, enrapt by another winner from the pen of Purcell and now have to attempt to write a review trying to do it justice.... without giving anything away about the wonderfully twisty plot!

This time, Purcell takes us to the city of Bath. No longer the haunt of the Georgian dandy, Bath is a somewhat faded, grimy version of its former self - at least when is comes to the parts of the city our characters inhabit.

Here we meet Agnes Darken, disappointed in love and struggling to support her aged mother and young nephew Cedric, the son of her wicked, late sister Constance, on the living she can scrape together from her talents as a silhouette artist. Times are hard, because the age of the photograph is here and her old fashioned portraits are being eschewed in favour of the more fashionable daguerreotype - not to mention that Agnes' health is not what it once was. But she has little choice other than to do the best she can if she is to continue to support her loved ones and maintain any sort of independence.

When Agnes' few clients start to suffer untimely ends shortly after sitting for her, she is compelled to seek out the aid of the other-worldly Pearl, a child medium, and her older half-sister Myrtle, in order to find out who is behind the murders. In doing so, Agnes fears they have unleashed something dark from beyond the veil on the unsuspecting citizens of Bath, but she has to pursue her mission to the bitter end, whatever the cost to herself and Pearl.

What follows is the most chilling of tales that delves into the world the mesmerist, the medium and the developing Victorian fascination with spiritualism and plays with our minds in that special way Laura Purcell is so good at. She has such a talent for blurring the lines between the real world and the imagination - bringing in just enough of a supernatural undercurrent to have you questioning what is really happening. Interestingly, Purcell brings in an intriguing theme of the uneasy peace between the medical profession and the world of the spiritualist too, which adds an extra dimension to the weird goings on.

As is par for the course in her writing, she also manages to work in elements of jealousy, betrayal, revenge, control, and coercive behaviour - especially nicely done here with the parallel sisterly relationships of Agnes/Constance and Pearl/Myrtle - social history, and the powerlessness of women in a world controlled by men, that always makes her books so rich and multi-layered.

This is terrifying stuff, conjuring up scenes that will have you hiding under the duvet at the slightest bump in the night and every suspicious shadow on the wall. It's seriously creepy, more than a little gruesome and has a couple of tricks in its tail that will leave you reeling, with the kind of 'kick-you into-touch' ending that she always pulls off with aplomb. I loved it!

The Shape of Darkness is available to buy now from your favourite book retailer or from Bookshop.org HERE.

Thank you to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

About the author:

Laura Purcell is a former bookseller and lives in Colchester with her husband and pet guinea pigs.

 Her first novel for Raven Books, The Silent Companions, was a Radio 2 and Zoe Ball ITV Book Club pick and was the winner of the WHSmith Thumping Good Read Award, while her subsequent books – The Corset and Bone China – established Laura as the queen of the sophisticated, and spooky, page-turner.