Review: Property of a Lady

Property of a Lady by Sarah Rayne
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’ve noticed before, perusing Ms. Rayne’s “psychological mysteries,” especially those which border on the actually ghostly (which is many of her novels), that Ms. Rayne exhibits the ability Henry James demonstrated in “Turn of the Screw” a full century or more earlier. “Real life,” in whichever era Ms. Rayne is weaving, is delineated with clarity, conciseness, and focus; and in places, reading a Rayne story is akin in some ways to reading in the sub-genre known as “British cosy mysteries.” So did “Turn of the Screw” appear, at the beginning, and for some time afterwards.

But horror and the Supernatural are not always best exposed by “splatterpunk.” Sometimes it is the very subtleties, the quiet approach, the soft creak of old lumber, the wind’s whistling in the attic eaves, that inspires the churning of our stomachs and the anxiety in our emotions. Sarah Rayne is utterly skilled at the subtle underpinnings, the spider’s silk that entraps the unwary venture, She is as accomplished a storyteller as Henry James in “The Turn of the Screw” and as H. H. Munro (Saki) in the inimitable classic “The Open Window.”

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