Talented actress Diana and young bishop Alistair, her partner in crime-solving and supernatural sleuthing, face the terrifying curse of the Scottish Play in this witty, creeptastic paranormal mystery from New York Times bestselling British fantasy author Simon R. Green

Miles away from town or city, and centuries away from civilization, three witches dance around a great brass cauldron, singing songs of horror and hatred. The Crone raises her voice to ‘When shall we three meet again?’ . . . only for the cauldron to emit a thick, poisonous smoke, sending her, and her fellow actresses, fleeing for their lives.

For the director, it’s the last straw. Macbeth is famously a cursed play, but the incident, not the first in a long line of creepy events, makes him wonder if someone – or something – is trying to sabotage the play. The show must go on! But not if the forces of darkness are determined for it not to.

Talented actress Diana Hunt, hired to give her Lady Macbeth, knows just the man to turn to for her partner in crime-solving, handsome young bishop Alistair Kincaid, whose help investigating a series of seemingly supernatural murders has earned them the nickname the Holy Terrors. But with evil and black magic wrapping the theatre in darkness, this investigation might cost Alistair and Diana far more than they’re expecting.

My Review:

There’s a curse on ‘The Scottish Play’, or so the old acting tradition goes. Part of that curse is that if any of the actors in the play utter the play’s actual title, that the production will be doomed. It’s possible that tradition arose because The Tragedy of Macbeth has the potential to be a rather expensive play to put on, and a lot of theaters that did so went out of business because they were already in financial trouble and hoping that a splashy production would rescue them.

Or it could all be the witches’ fault. There are certainly plenty of them in any production of Macbeth.

The production of Macbeth that ‘the Actress’ half of the ‘Holy Terrors’ is rehearsing seems to already be covered in the curse from every possible angle even before her partner-in-solving-crimes, ‘the Bishop’, gets called in.

The theater they’re rehearsing in may not technically be haunted, but it’s been derelict for so long that it might as well be. It’s certainly falling apart around the actors’ ears. There have been a series of spooky, mildly dangerous, plausibly supernatural events amid the rehearsals from the very first day.

Neither the director nor the money men seem willing to take those events seriously, but Diana Hunt, ‘the Actress’, certainly is. So she calls in Bishop Alistair Kincaid, her very own Bish. At least she wants him to be.

Hers, that is.

Not that anyone can blame her – although a few people do – for wanting his stalwart presence at her side, because there’s something terribly wrong in the wings of this old theater. So far in their adventures, the spooky and the supernatural have turned out to all be matters of misdirection and human agency, but there’s a first time for everything.

And even if there’s not, the Holy Terrors have an excellent record of finding their way to the truth – no matter how much fog – or fire – or at least smoke – gets in their eyes.

Escape Rating B: I read this author for the tone of his voice – particularly his excellent line in snark – and this latest book was no exception. What makes this series especially fun is that the Bishop and the Actress give excellent banter. The series – at least so far – rides on the coattails of their obvious attraction to each other to the point where their every interaction hints at both the double entendre of old “the Bishop said to the Actress” jokes AND the will they/won’t they? of their relationship.

So I sunk right into this third entry in the series – after The Holy Terrors and Stone Certainty – because I was having a grand time just listening to the two of them talk to each other and egg each other on. For this reader, that’s the best part of the story.

But there is also a mystery. Based on their prior outings, I was pretty sure at the outset that whatever was going on in that awful theater was awfulness of the entirely human  – and living – variety. Not that someone wasn’t using the creepy atmosphere to further their aims, but that those aims were entirely among the living and so was the perpetrator – or perpetrators.

Like those previous books, this one does a terrific job in poking holes at something we’re already familiar with that affords plenty of opportunity for some sort of woo-woo trickery to ooze right into everyone’s subconscious. In The Holy Terrors it was reality TV, Stone Certainty featured a stone circle, while this time around its the shenanigans and superstitions of an acting troupe. The internal squabbles of this intimate group of frenemies certainly added to the rising tide of red herrings in solving the mystery.

In the end, this turned out to be a bit of Noises Off set backstage of the creepiest play to ever creep in a haunted theater filled with backstabbing personalities on all sides. I came into this one expecting to be entertained – possibly more than any audience this production might ever have – and that’s exactly what I got.

I was not expecting there to be a supernatural element in the actual mystery – and there wasn’t. The hint of the supernatural that the story did have was JUST the right touch.

What I did hope for was to see a bit of how the UST between the Bishop and the Actress was – or was not – going to resolve. I left the story thinking that they believe it did – but I’m not certain at all that it will work out. We’ll see whether it does for the book or the characters – or possibly but not likely both – if/when the series continues. Because this could be the end – but I kind of hope it isn’t.

Dare you enter the stone circle . . .? The world's most unlikely ghost-busting duo - actress Diana and handsome young bishop Alistair - are back in this spine-tingling paranormal mystery from
New York Times bestselling British fantasy author
There are stories about the dilapidated stone circle at Chipping Amesbury, going back centuries. Of people going missing, never to be seen again. Of people found dead inside the circle. Of monsters, and of demons. The villagers may tell the tales with relish to visiting tourists, but a careful observer will notice that there is no transport to the stones, no tours on offer, and the locals stay well away.
Alistair Kincaid, the youngest ever bishop of All Souls Hollow, is an expert in Britain's ancient stone circles. That's why, when landowner Sir Neville Chumley announces his plans to restore the circle to its ancient glory, he agrees to take part in a documentary about the project.
Well - that, plus talented actress Diana Hunt is on board. Ever since their last encounter, when the pair of them hunted ghosts and solved a murder, the tabloids have dubbed them the Holy Terrors, and Alistair can't wait to see her again.
But soon after filming begins, Alistair and Diana are plunged into a terrifying mystery. For the repositioning of the final stone unleashes a series of blood-chilling events that threaten to make them both believe in demons - if, that is, they make it out of the stone circle alive.
The Holy Terrors novels are funny, scary and thoroughly entertaining - perfect for fans of Simon R. Green's urban fantasy novels, as well as those who enjoy American Horror Story, The Haunting of Hill House, horror novels, and murder mysteries with a supernatural twist.

My Review:

As the Bishop said to the Actress, this time was better than the last time. Or perhaps he should have said. Or I’d have said to him (as the reader and not the actress) because this second outing in the Holy Terrors Mystery series was better than the first entry, The Holy Terrors.

It helped more than a bit that we are at least already acquainted with that Bishop and that Actress, Alistair Kincaid and Diana Hunt, after their first meeting and first adventure.

What REALLY helped was that even though a whole bunch of the mystery was obviously a put up job from the off – even if we don’t know exactly how it was put up, or why – the setting was inherently a whole lot creepier than the supposedly “most haunted hall in England” in that first go around.

Stone circles are a haunting feature of the British Isles – and there are considerably more of them than people tend to think there are. Over 1,300 are scattered over England, Scotland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Wales, Brittany and the Channel Islands. Stonehenge may be the largest, and certainly the best known, but it’s far, far, far from the only one.

And no, with all our science, we still don’t know for certain what they were built for. But they are fascinating, and creepy, and fascinatingly creepy all at the same time. Whatever the reason for them, the ‘monumental’ amount of effort required to build them at the time when they were built represented a HUGE drain on the society of the time. Their builders certainly thought they were important based on the amount of time and effort that was needed to build them.

Myths and legends are attached to all of them – and not just the stories of time travel between the stones that the Outlander books popularized. In the present, they also generate a lot of tourist income wherever they are located.

All of which makes the idea of this second book in the Holy Terrors series more plausible and a bit less of a joke than the first story. Which made the whole enterprise just a bit easier to get into and go along with for the ride.

That the tiny, off-the-beaten path town of Chipping Amesbury, with its even more out of the way stone circle, would like to revive the tourist industry that used to sustain them before the town becomes as derelict as the stone circle makes a whole lot of sense. That the new local squire actually has enough money to put a big push behind that desire is a bit less common but at least is plausible.

That some locals think he’s disturbing things that shouldn’t be disturbed makes a nice foil for his attempt at restoration, and provides just the right note of tension to this story about a made-to-order documentary about this particular stone circle and how much it can improve the local economy – which seemingly EVERYONE should want.

That the documentary production includes the local TV news personalities, to give it some gravitas, and the ‘Holy Terrors’ duo who caught the popular imagination back in their first adventure to give the project a bit of pizzazz seems like exactly the kind of thing that a publicity hunting squire would do to drum up the desired interest.

Which is, of course, when the entire thing goes utterly pear-shaped, and the crew is stranded in that remote stone circle, surrounded by dense fog, as the bodies start dropping. Out of the circle and seemingly into thin air – or perhaps, to some Other Place.

Escape Rating B: I liked this better than the first book, because I went into it more willing to suspend my disbelief this second time around. I’m already convinced that there is nothing real about so-called ‘Reality TV’, but I’ve been to more than one stone circle and they do have a bit of a weird vibe even if it’s only in the sense of “what the hell made these people go to all this trouble.” I’ve been to Stonehenge a bunch of times and it’s been gloomy and lowering and weird every time.

So I went into this one, well, not thinking that anything supernatural or extraterrestrial was going to come out of the stones, but that both the locals and the crew would be a bit creeped out and that everyone on all sides would have some ‘feelings’ about it all because the places do engender those feelings for real.

I was expecting a human agency behind it all – because that’s the way that all of this author’s recent paranormal-ish, supernatural-ish series (I’m looking at you Ishmael Jones) mostly work.

But I did expect to have a bit more fun along the way than I did last time because the premise had a bit more meat to it. And it did and I did. But I’m left wondering just how long the author plans to ride this one-trick pony, because there’s no real meat on those bones.

Although I certainly want the Bishop and the Actress to resolve their “will-they? / won’t they?” relationship before the ride is over!