Roots of Evil

I haven’t read a novel quite like ROOTS OF EVIL since, oh, 1790 or so. No, the language isn’t difficult, and the sentence structure is modern, but the novel is so close to being a real throwback Gothic, author Sarah Rayne even admits it: “Liam dealt with the champagne competently and filled the glasses, somehow ending up in a seat next to Lucy. ‘Are you thinking this is pure gothic?’ he said. ‘Unknown cousins, and wicked family solicitors turning up?’”

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I like the way a good Gothic thriller builds tension through a subtle series of events and observations, and then spring something ghastly on you. And don’t kid yourself that Gothic violence wasn’t horrendous. The descriptions are usually less graphic, but the acts themselves are pretty awful. Just think about being buried alive or what that pendulum was doing with each swing.

This novel is concerned mainly with members of the Trent/Fane family. Lucy Trent works for a company that restores old movies. Her grandmother was a silent film actress who worked under the name Lucretia von Wolff. Edmund Fane is a lawyer, also one of Lucretia’s grandkids. Michael Sallis works for a charity helping wayward teens, and he’s another member of this very extended family.

Not all of these relationships are apparent from the beginning. The characters come together because a writer named Trixie Smith is writing a book about infamous murder cases from the 1950s and she is currently looking into the shocking affair of Lucretia von Wolff who, while in the midst of a comeback production, murdered two men and then committed suicide. The studio at which this happened was then closed down and it has been standing empty for 50 years. Trixie talks the current owner into allowing her to examine the place along with Edmund and Liam, another lawyer. They don’t exactly have an afternoon in the park.

Rayne is known for her ability to raise serious goosebumps with her descriptions of old buildings. You know that something unpleasant will be revealed in Ashwood Studio just by nature of the kind of story this is, but the author adds to the tension by emphasizing the heaviness of the atmosphere. As you walk through the dust and cobwebs, that good old classic ghost-story frisson starts playing “can’t catch me” up and down your spine … and when the payoff comes, it comes in the form of a giallo-like burst of gory violence. I don’t want to give too much away, but I will tell you that whatever is committing a new round of killings has a thing for doing excessive violence to eyes.

Now that’s just hinting at half the book’s story. Rayne breaks away from the present every so often and tells you Lucretia’s life story, beginning when she was a lady’s maid in pre-WWI Vienna, through her years in the movies and her imprisonment during WWII in Auschwitz. You actually get two stories for the price of one: a psychological thriller with Gothic overtones, and a historical novel.

All in all, ROOTS OF EVIL, despite that painfully generic title, is one of the good ones. Under another name, Rayne wrote fantasy and horror novels for 20 years before trying her hand at psychological thrillers, of which she’s now written about a half-dozen. I don’t know of another contemporary author who’s doing just what she does in this novel. Take a look for yourself. —Doug Bentin

Buy it at Amazon.