Books 2014 - Lord John and the Hand of Devils by Diana Gabaldon

[byslantedlight]

In all the house-moving malarkey, I've not posted a single RIP book yet, but I have actually read one - even though I didn't realise it really was, when I started - and have nearly finished a second. So if I don't get a move on I will never get into the proper spirit... *g*
This is one of those books where the blurb doesn't come slightly close to describing the book, so I'm not even going to include it. This is three stories involving Lord John Grey, all of which have a slightly supernatural bent to them. They were written separately and eventually published together in one volume, so how much of a coincidence it is I'm not sure... It seems to suit the times though, the eighteenth century, all dark with superstition fighting back against science, and no one quite knowing which is real yet...

In Lord John and the Hellfire Club Grey becomes involved with a group of men through whom he is invited to join a rather sinister organisation - which he does, because there has been a death and he promises to avenge it.

In Lord John and the Succubus, Grey is in Germany when murder strikes again, this time at the hand - apparently - of a succubus, and there is death and gravedigging before reason, of a sort, wins the day.

Finally, in Lord John and the Haunted Soldier, Grey has returned from the war in Germany, recovered from being gravely injured, and finds himself under inquiry for the explosion of a cannon of which he was in charge. But is it the cannon, or something else that is haunting him...?

I enjoyed these stories - and a fourth, Lord John and the Zombies, in A Trail of Fire - because they were the perfect mixture of haunting RIP stories, and actual real-life this-is-what's-happening. Because of course we rarely know what's happening - and anyway, what is more cruel and perilous than people themselves...? The history is nicely done, so is the story, and everything, for me, balanced in just the right way that I enjoyed these shorter stories (novellas) almost as much as if they'd been full-length novels. And for me that's saying something - though of course I always want more... *g* In a way though I almost feel it's cheating to include these as Readers in Peril books, despite the vague sense of menace that overhung their world, because I was always sure that Grey would win through - how much peril, I wonder, is really required to count as an RIP story...? Well, I'll keep going and work it out... *g*

(Four books, any length, that you feel fit (the very broad definitions) of R.I.P. literature.)
Lord John and the Hand of Devils by Diana Gabaldon