The Auld De'il: A Catherine Cavendish Book Review
In The Haunting of
Henderson Close, Hannah moves to Edinburgh to start fresh as her daughter
has moved to Australia and her marriage has ended. She sees her job as a tour
guide for Henderson Close as a dream job. However, her arrival soon sparks mysterious
paranormal activity that can’t be explained.
“…Her role is to take parties of visitors along the spooky,
twisting streets, telling them old legends of ghosts, plague and interesting
characters,” author Catherine Cavendish said. “All is going well for a short
time but then Hannah starts to see things she cannot explain: a mysterious
woman standing in the street below her flat – a woman who cannot be there, a
slip in time back to the Henderson Close of Victorian times, a little girl with
no face. All of a sudden, the legends of Henderson Close are becoming all too
real and the worst is yet to come.”
Along for the spooky ride are Hannah’s fellow tour guides,
George and Mairead. They encounter disappearances, time jumps, paranormal
investigators and an entity that the locals refer to as the Auld De’il. They
take it upon themselves to not only solve the case of who really murdered Miss
Carmichael but to drive the evil spirit back to where it came from.
The overall storyline is fascinating – from the underground
town to the connection between Hannah, George and Mairead. The paranormal
aspect is a well-blended mix of creepy and crawly. It’s a story that the reader
immediately gets invested in and is fairly easy to complete within a day.
Unfortunately, the ending falls into a state of convolution.
The last few chapters seem rushed compared to the rest of the book, and new
plot points seem to come out of nowhere. By the time the last paragraph is
finished, there are more questions than answers.
It would have been nice to delve more into the characters of
George and Mairead instead of numerous trips to the pub and details on how
Hannah’s husband left. More time spent
on their personalities and why they shared this connection might have given the
reader more of an emotional attachment to the characters.
Historical Edinburgh comes alive through the pages of The Haunting of Henderson Close and brings
along fantastical ghost stories. A skeptic can be turned into a believer after
just one tour with Hannah, George or Mairead as their guide. But what exactly
happened to them at the end?
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