Gypsies, Ghosts, and Dreams

I’ve read Deborah Grabien mysteries before and I love the whole ghosts-coming-out-of-the-walls thing. The ghosts in her “Haunted Ballad” series are invoked by the stirring lyrics strung and sung by Ringan, handsome modern bard and guitarist, and channeled through the body of Penny Wintercraft-Hawkes, jaguar-driving noble beauty/actress of the realm. The mystery this handsome and dynamic duo must solve is the cause of the anguish of the spirits, because only unhappy ghosts haunt.

Due to their professions, singer and actor, Ringan and Penny are usually on the road to somewhere new, their trips taking them throughout the British Isles. Grabien does a good job of not only conjuring ghosts but atmosphere as well, providing a travelogue of quaint and charming and scary places along with a good song or two, and, of course, a solid mystery of wronged love or twisted desire or just plain greed and envy.

If you just cannot buy into ghosts, these are not the books for you, but if you can suspend disbelief for a shivery but delicious hour or two, come on down: the Haunted Ballad series will enchant. I just finished New-Slain Knight and it was great fun. This time Ringan and Penny take off for a vacation in Cornwall, revisiting the land of Arthurian legend, Tintagel included. They are accompanied by Becca, Ringan’s stunningly beautiful and musically-talented niece. The story behind the ghosts that come to haunt the trio makes little sense, if carefully examined, but why look closely? Just enjoy the great scenery, the wonderful songs, the beautiful characters, and the warped ghosts.

This is the second book I’ve read in a week that used incest as a plot line, and both were set in England of long ago. New-Slain Knight takes us back to the fifteenth century and Deanna Raybourn’s Silent on the Moor takes us to the late nineteenth century (as do all her Lady Julia Grey novels). Now that I think about it, The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, also set in the nineteenth century, relies as well upon incestuous doings to unroll a plot of deceit and dismay, and family loss and ruin. Can you think of anymore? Let me know.

I liked Silent on the Moor, this time suspending my disbelief not over ghosts but over the fact that I was reading a book with a bodice-ripper cover. But I enjoyed getting to know the characters, I liked the weaving-in of gypsy folklore, and I laughed like crazy over lines like “I had never been a witness to the slow, graceful gestures, the unveiling of solid male flesh like a glorious statue being revealed for the first time.” The use of dreams and visions to move the plot along was less interesting for me, as I always recoil from the use of dreams in novels (the only interesting dreams are our own, and only to ourselves). For heavy nineteenth century atmosphere I prefer the machinations of Setterfield in The Thirteenth Tale, who calls upon every device ever used in every nineteenth century novel and uses each to perfection to create her wonderful novel.