Printer's Devil Court - Susan Hill

Susan Hill's annual offering for the Halloween period is quite simply a disappointment. This is the book that convinced me she's lost her touch as a writer and is better off packing in the ghost genre altogether. Let's be frank, she hasn't written anything even close to the majesty of The Woman in Black and is unlikely to now. The first thing that struck me about the badlyh vBulletin named Printer's Devil Court was the terrible editing and numerous typos. On the second page, the protagonist's lady friend is called Clara one moment and Sarah the next, all in the same paragraph. This isn't a printing error, it's Susan not knowing what she's even writing and is but one example in a long list of mistakes. Even the titular location frequently changes name. My edition features illustrations taken from Dickens novels that bear little or no relation to the narrative. Furthermore, the artist goes completely uncredited which I'm pretty sure is illegal.

As for the story itself, at only 128 pages and small ones at that, there's remarkably little to go on. Set in Hill's favourite setting, Victorian London, a group of medical trainees conspire to raise the dead by performing experiments on corpses in the mortuary. Hill engages her usual theme of well-to-do gentleman sitting around drinking port and shuddering at the chill of the fog, with plenty of preamble about how things will take a sinister turn that will reverberate through into later life. It's all stuff she's written about before, and the concept of alchemical reanimation itself is as old as time - nothing particularly innovative is added to the mix. I read through the lackluster narrative in two sittings and barely felt engaged or moved on any kind of level. The ending was weak and unfulfilling with nothing really explained. Best avoided.

Rating: 1/5