The Small Hand - Susan Hill

Published in 2010, The Small Hand is the story of an antiquarian bookseller who takes a wrong turn on the way back from a clients house and ends up in the garden of a derelict Edwardian house. Whilst standing in the gathering dusk, he feels a phantom hand creeping into his own. He dismisses the experience until he is later visited by bouts of panic and terror, prompting him to eventually return to the garden and uncover its dark secret. Unlike the excellent, The Woman in Black, this story is set in modern times, and like many of Hill's books, firmly entrenched in the realm of wealthy academics. The uncanny is weaved between Oxford lunches and fine brandy swilling, with a very privileged and polite tone guaranteed to appeal to the elderly reader.

In my opinion, Susan Hill drops the ball with this one. The story was completely predictable and I managed to guess the end 'twist' revelation too early to enjoy any suspenseful speculation. Jeremy Dyson in The Guardian disagrees, he claims that '...when the climax comes, the explanation and the source of the haunting are not what you think at all. You really don't see it coming.' Mr Dyson is wrong though, the clues are so heavy handed you'd have to be reading under the influence of substances to miss them. To write I was disappointed by The Small Hand would be a bit of an understatement. I felt not only cheated, but patronised and fobbed off, like someone had been tightly holding my hand all the way through. Adding to that, I've never found child ghosts particularly frightening.

Rating: 2/5