Book Review for 8.2.24: Afraid of the Dark

Title: Afraid of the Dark

Author: H.P. Mallory

Date: 2014

Quote: "I almost felt as if the house and I were buddies."

Retired building contractor Hank thinks Peyyton's house is beyond hope. He's retired at forty-eight because his first wife died in an accident on oen of his construction sites, so he doesn't want to work with Peyton either. But she's an attractive divorcee who obviously misses sharing a bed, though she insists she does not miss her husband.

Fortunately Peyton flies all her red flags, confiding to Hank about her istory of drug use, the ex's having helped her sober up as a sort of mission project and apparently identified sobriety with being a quiet church lady, her urge to reclaim her inner party animal. It's not the house that's beyond all hope. It's Hank.

But, romantic though sharing a job can be, they find things in the old house that distract them from their mutual attraction. Someone papered some of the walls inside the house with reports of a series of murders committed about a hundred years ago. As Peyton saves the papers and reads the story, she starts dreaming about a charming French-American policeman from that time period. He flirts with her and encourages her interest in the house's history. This leads Peyton into a Ouija board session, in which the board spells out the victims' names and then goes into a countdown that supposedly indicates that a malevolent spirit is trying to get at the living people present. So she rushes out to start a "cleansing" ritual, buying a "gris-gris" bag from a punker who seems to despise her for not being a voodoo practitioner already--embarrassed by own lack of knowledge, I'd guess. But, before the cleansing, she goes out to dinner with Hank...

To find out how the cleansing ceremony goes, readers will have to buy the next book. To find out how Hank and Peyton resolve their differences and get married, they'll have to buy the five-book series.

If you're willing to suspend disbelief in ghosts and voodoo, otherwise this short novel has much to recommend it. Mallory wrote like the published professional she wanted to be, ten years ago, and has become by now. Thehistorical mystery is fact-based. The characters are credible,. The atmosphere is delightful. Of course, the novel's being reviewed by a person who fell in love with a co-worker on a construction site doesn't hurt anything, but I tried to exclude that from consideration. I really tried. Like Hank tries to keep a level head about Peyton and her house, in the novel, I tried.

How you feel about cliff-hanger serial fiction is, of course, up to you.