This is what I originally submitted; maybe was too much to fit on one page:
'The Ghost Hunters' by Neil Spring
London: Quercus, 2013
Paperback, 522 pp., 20 cm., illus., footnotes, bibliography. ISBN 9781780879758. £7.99 UK.
'The Ghost Hunters', Neil Spring’s first novel, is based on the life of ‘ghost hunter’ Harry Price, and his investigation of “the most haunted house in England,” Borley Rectory. This reader was gripped by its sense of supernatural menace, and gradual revealing of mysteries and secrets – notwithstanding the numerous typos, dialogue anachronisms, plot implausibilities and factual errors scattered amongst its pages.
The plot centres on a turbulent twenty-year relationship between Harry Price and his secretary, Sarah Grey (loosely based on the real-life Lucy Kay). There are signs that Spring intended to structure his novel around a love triangle composed of Price, Grey and the journalist Vernon Wall, but the character of the younger, more attractive Wall serves mainly to show what Grey has missed by throwing her lot in with Price.
It was difficult for this reader to understand why an attractive 22-year-old former photographer’s model (incidentally, a most unlikely occupation for a respectable middle-class young woman in the 1920s) would have been so besotted with the 45-year-old Price, whose “yellow teeth” are referred to more than once. Perhaps we are meant to infer that for Sarah Grey, Price is a surrogate father?
Spring has certainly done his background research, amassing a good deal of factual detail about Price’s life and investigations, which he deploys in the narrative - but some startling chronological errors detract from the novel’s overall credibility. Revealing Price’s links with Nazi Germany, Wall tells Grey “there are signals from Germany that Hitler is taking a special interest in psychic phenomena” – yet this conversation is stated as taking place one evening in May 1945!
A recurring memory of the heroine is of her father, weeping over an opened letter, in 1914. Subsequent events suggest we are meant to understand this as his fear of the call-up. But conscription in Britain did not begin until 1916.
Price’s headquarters are stated as being at Queensberry Place, SW7 from the 1920s through to the 1940s, but the real-life Price moved his National Laboratory of Psychical Research to nearby Roland Gardens in December 1930. His lease had been terminated by the London Spiritualist Alliance (who owned the building), owing to their exasperation with a man they had come to regard as an enemy of the Spiritualist movement.
Spring acknowledges that he is aware of the change of address in his author’s note at the end of the book. But he doesn’t mention the reason why Price was compelled to move, which could have been a useful detail with which to address Price’s quixotic nature, throughout his career shifting position from sceptic to believer and back again –something which, elsewhere, Spring does make good use of. Like Price and Grey, the reader’s perspective constantly shifts from a sceptical position - in which attestations of inexplicable phenomena at Borley and elsewhere are the result of credulity or outright fraud - to one which accepts the reality of the supernatural, and back again.
But there is a curious inability on the part of the heroine to consider the possibility that whilst some phenomena are faked, this does not discredit the entire corpus of evidence. Grey appears to view the question in binary terms, either ‘fake’ or ‘genuine’. This is odd, because at one point in the narrative, she herself suggests that a genuine medium may be compelled to resort to trickery if physically or mentally tired.
Price’s infamous photograph of the medium Rudi Schneider in the séance room, with one arm free and having apparently evaded ‘control,’ makes an appearance. For Grey, the ensuing doubt discounts the possibility that any of Rudi’s phenomena had been genuine. Similarly, she accuses Price of having faked the entire Borley happenings, despite the impossibility of his being implicated in having produced phenomena reported during the Bull occupancy in the nineteenth century.
In his author’s note, Spring does acknowledge that:
“It is the legend of Borley rather than its historical detail that I have sought to re-imagine. This novel is certainly not a faithful retelling of Harry Price’s association with the house, but a fictional representation of what might have happened.”
Fair enough, but perhaps this note would have been better placed prior to the start of the narrative, rather than at the end, so that Price or Borley train-spotters such as myself might not have found themselves becoming increasingly hot under the collar during their reading of the novel.
Dialogue is mostly convincingly appropriate for the early twentieth-century period, but there are several jarring modern-day anachronisms, such as Wall expressing a desire for “closure”, Grey cautioning another character “good luck with that”, or, most notably, Price’s announcement to place Borley Rectory under “lockdown.”
There are various typos, including, at one point, an incorrect chapter heading (ch.8). These may not be the author’s fault, but suggest careless copy editing (or perhaps the lack of a copy editor, in these financially straitened times). A good editor might also have spotted the anachronistic dialogue elements, and other oddities.
Nevertheless, there’s a growing sense of tension and menace in the second half of the book, as the ‘Borley Curse’ is revealed. Whilst the motive for the curse is questionable, Sarah Grey’s mounting fear and dread is well-handled, despite over-reliance on the “But what I could not have known then...” type of chapter ending. The figure of a spectral nun is central to the curse, drawing upon the ‘real’ Borley, as does the well-realised character of Marianne Foyster, whose real-life equivalent, tempestuous and unconventional, is a gift to writers.
Another real-Borley element is the St Ignatius medallion (found on the real-life Price’s body at his death) which makes repeated appearances throughout the novel – a striking visual device which would work well on screen. Indeed, in his author’s note, Spring expresses the hope that “dramatic adaptations” of his characters Harry and Sarah be realised, and we are told that television rights have already been secured. One way or another, then, the legends of Borley and of Price will hopefully be reaching a new audience as a result of this engrossing, if flawed, novel.
If you’re a Borley or Harry Price obsessive, be warned. But if you want a chilling English ghost story, this may be for you – if you’re able to ignore its various gaffs. 6 / 10