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Former horror writer (who could she be? No one seems to know her former identity) Sarah Rayne changed genres after reading a newspaper article about Indian funerary rites. TOWER OF SILENCE evolved from that inspiration. Despite TOWER being, nominally, suspense/crime fiction, even a not terribly discerning reader will be able to spot roots of horror in this novel. Finding herself short of funds, middle-aged Selina March is persuaded by her god-daughter to transform her very old Inchcape habitation, Teind House, into a B&B. Attracted by the northern Scottish locale, author Joanna Savile travels there to do research for a novel she wishes to write. She expresses interest in the inhabitants of Moy, a nearby hospital for the criminally insane, especially one woman, Mary Maskelyne, formerly a notorious child murderer. After visiting the institution, Joanna disappears. Her husband Krzystof is summoned from Spain where he has been sent on work-related matters by a company specialising in the discovery of religious artifacts. He, Miss March's 'helper' Emily and Moy's Dr. Patrick Irvine all become involved in an investigation into Joanna's disappearance. What is not known to the residents of Inchcape is that in 1948 a group of children, including the then seven-year-old Selina together with Christabel Maskelyne, she whose as yet unconceived sister Mary would later become a murderer, were taken prisoner by a group of rebels in Rajasthan, in north western India. The insurgents make demands of the British saying that if the ultimatum is not met, the children will be slain. The natives have customs, unpleasant to western eyes, of offering up their dead within the Tower of Silence in Alwar that vultures may strip the flesh from the corpses. The children are taken there and prepared for execution. When the time comes, Selina manages to escape but her parents, who had rushed to the Tower in an attempt at rescue, are murdered. Orphaned Selina is returned to Scotland, to Teind House and the tender care of two aunts and a hideous great-uncle. The child is initially horrified to learn that an Irish Round Tower bearing a remarkable resemblance to the Tower of Silence, is located near her new home. Still, even objects of horror may, in time, be put to some use. TOWER OF SILENCE was longlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier award but, given the opposition, which included eminent writers such as Ian Rankin and Minette Walters, did not make the shortlist. The future may prove more rewarding as this author displays an obvious love of and facility with the language. She has a talent for constructing believable, albeit macabre, plots and very lifelike characters -- although readers may wish to avoid meeting real life representations of those characters on a dark night in some deserted close. Sarah Rayne is widely read and not averse to displaying her familiarity with the great poets and playwrights by having her dramatis personae quote lines from their works. The book is an interesting study in how horrific incidents in childhood as well as a necessarily faulty understanding of what may be presented as fact rather than lore, may affect children and influence their behaviour in their later -- or, in this instance, not too much later -- life. The narrative is set in three time frames: 1948, when the children are abducted and most murdered; the intermediate time when Selina and Mary are growing up and the present day of the novel, the late 1990s. Despite the darkness of the story and the depiction of the tragic loss of life, even in those permitted to go on living, the author displays an excellent sense of humour, one also very evident in the novel ROOTS OF EVIL, which I had previously read. Sarah Rayne has another book, SPIDERLIGHT, in preparation, one which her growing audience will no doubt anticipate with pleasure.
Reviewed by Denise Pickles, July 2005
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