The Murmers (The Annie Jackson Mysteries Book One) by Michael J. Malone

 

The Murmers (The Annie Jackson Mysteries Book One) by Michael J. Malone.

Published 14th September 2023 by Orenda Books.

From the cover of the book:

In the beginning there was fear.
White-hot, nerve-shredding fear.
Terrifying premonitions of deaths.
And then they started…
The Murmurs…

On the first morning of her new job at Heartfield House, a care home for the elderly, Annie Jackson wakens from a terrifying dream. And when she arrives at the home, she knows that the first old man she meets is going to die.

How she knows this is a terrifying mystery, but it is the start of horrifying premonitions … a rekindling of the curse that has trickled through generations of women in her family – a wicked gift known only as 'the murmurs'…

With its reappearance comes an old, forgotten fear that is about to grip Annie Jackson.

And this time, it will never let go…

A compulsive gothic thriller and a spellbinding supernatural mystery about secrets and small communities, about faith, courage and self-preservation, The Murmurs is a startling and compulsive read from one of Scotland’s finest authors…

***********

When Annie Jackson begins a new job at a care home for the elderly, she is plagued with first day jitters, but she has no idea that this fresh start will bring with it a nightmare. When meeting a resident called Steve, Annie is overwhelmed with the feeling that he is going to die very soon, but when she tries to share her fears with him, he brushes her concern aside. The very next morning brings news that Steve has died in the very way Annie has foreseen. 

A terrifying ability has awakened within Annie, and as she tries to cope with a stream of visions of death that will not leave her in peace, she begins to wonder if this power is somehow related to the childhood she cannot remember. With the help of her twin brother Lewis, Annie searches for clues to help her unlock the mystery of the years before a fateful crash that killed her mother and left her with amnesia. What they discover harks back to family secrets, and a curse that has inflicted her female bloodline with terrifying premonitions, bringing with it the danger of madness, fear and suspicion.

In this intricately plotted mystery, Michael J. Malone skilfully blends the boundaries between past and present, echoing through time the shattering legacy of both Jacobean witch trials and the Highland Clearances on Annie Jackson's family. Annie knows little of her family history, as her parents both died in tragic circumstances, and her own memories have been wiped clean by the car accident that killed her mother. However, when haunting nightmares of drowning herald the onset of premonitions of death, she begins to question whether she has been told all there is to know about her family, and embarks on journey that reveals far more about sins of the past than she could ever imagine.

Told through the tense chain of events that follow Annie's realisation that she has the ability to foretell death, flashbacks to family conflict between Annie's mother and her two sisters, and excerpts from the memoir of Annie's distant relation Moira Mclean written in 1818, this story oozes Gothic vibes. Malone delves into history to bring alive episodes within Annie's family tree that show how passion, jealously and fierce rivalry entwined with age old suspicion gave birth to a hatred that cursed future generations. And in a stroke of pure genius, he embroiders the effects into a gripping mix of domestic drama and cracking crime story in the present.

As the separate storylines in time and place unfurl, Annie finds herself embroiled in a search for the truth about the murders of young women in the Scottish Highlands which leads her into terrible danger. In parallel, the secrets that lie thick around her own parentage, and the origin of the curse that has left such a toll on her and the women before her are revealed. Everything comes together in a mighty collision as the tangled threads resolve themselves in a powerful moment of shocking clarity - with a glorious little parting kick in Moira's memoir too.

Malone's themes run thick and fast, and a sense of foreboding holds you tightly throughout. He explores faith, deeply held superstition, madness, fear, and an unwillingness to confront the truth, through every part of this tale. I particularly enjoyed how he plays with power, charisma, and the subversion of religion to ramp up that disquieting feeling in the pit of your stomach, and cleverly uses themes of different kinds of witch hunts appropriate to each time period. 

This book hits the all consuming sweet spot between being terrified by what you are reading and yet unable to look away for a second. It gave me the absolute chills, in the best possible way. I am delighted to find that this is the first in a series of mysteries for Annie too, as I desperately need more of this fabulous Tartan Noir in my life. 

The Murmers is available to buy now in paperback, ebaook and audio formats. You can support the very best of indie publishing by buying direct from Orenda Books HERE.

Thank you to Orenda Books for sending me a proof of this book in return for an honest review, and to Random Things Tours for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

About the author:

Michael Malone is a prize-winning poet and author who was born and brought up in the heart of Burns’ country. He has published over 200 poems in literary magazines throughout the UK, including New Writing Scotland, Poetry Scotland and Markings. Blood Tears, his bestselling debut novel won the Pitlochry Prize from the Scottish Association of Writers. 

His psychological thriller, A Suitable Lie, was a number-one bestseller, and the critically acclaimed House of Spines, After He Died, In the Absence of Miracles and A Song of Isolation soon followed suit.

A former Regional Sales Manager (Faber & Faber) he has also worked as an IFA and a bookseller. 

Michael lives in Ayr.