The Secret of Cold Hill

Product Information

There is one thing that never appears in the estate agent brochures: nobody has ever survived beyond forty in Cold Hill House and no one has ever truly left . . . Peter James, author of the Det. Roy Grace police procedural series, has turned his deft hand to a new genre with this series, with mixed results. The story is very readable, because James is so skilled at writing narrative and dialogue. But the plot felt repetitive, consisting of a series of odd things happening, Jason and Emily talking themselves into believing that nothing strange is happening, and then more odd things happening. I did enjoy how James resolved the storyline. The following Sunday, we invited her parents to lunch. Whilst she was occupied putting the finishing touches to the meal, I took her mother aside and asked her what exactly she had seen that day we were moving in. She described a woman, with a grey face, dressedin grey silk crinoline, moving across the atrium – exactly what the old man had described to me.

In fact, as I sit here writing this, I am now positing another possible explanation for some of the confusion. Hmmm...well I’m not going to share it with anyone; they might think I’m a bit crazy to even come up with the idea. The characters that populate The Secret of Cold Hill are compelling. Readers will most probably find the lead couple, Jason and Emily, very agreeable and relatable. I genuinely wanted this couple to conquer the feat of Cold Hill Park! On the other hand, I had plenty of contempt for the other couple of the tale, the Penze-Weedell’s. However, I think we have all had cringe worthy neighbours in our lives at some point in time that we wish to avoid at all costs! James utilises a good dose of humour to this couple, which offsets the darkness of this spine tingling tale.

Summary

It's not scary in the slightest. It's about as terrifying as Thomas the Tank Engine, and to be frank, he creates main protagonists so appallingly middle-class that you sort of wish the ghosts would hurry up and kill them. The looming presence of Cold Hill House is now a distant memory. In its place stands a new development of modern homes, built after the devastating fire that burnt the house to the ground. You'll like this house, with what you write,’ the owner told me mischievously on our first viewing. 'We have three ghosts.’ It turned out he was fibbing – the house, we were to discover later, actually had four . . . There is long-winded focus on things like which flavour chocolate choices are being consumed from a tin or a coffee machine. So much inserted boring and irrelevant detail.

You cannot bury evil’ states the spine tingling front cover tagline of bestselling British author Peter James’ brand new novel, The Secret of Cold Hill. Following on from his 2015 release, The House on Cold Hill, which was recently made into a theatre production, the second book in the Cold Hill series is creepy, intense, unpredictable and consuming. As do some of the characters, unfortunately. The neighbours are a ridiculously cliched caricature of a middle class elderly couple (despite being described as in their early 50s) and the main protagonists are frankly so unlikeable, I was secretly cheering for the ghosts to drop some masonry on their heads and have done with it. As the novel progresses, many things begin to become confusing. We see events through Jason’s perspective throughout and when he or Emily is confused or disagree, what are we to think? Does it matter? At one point late in the book, Jason thinks to himself How much, since they had moved here, was real? I think this is an important question as the confusion of the last third of the book actually decreased my feelings of dread. I had been feeling a build up but then I lost where the plot was going along with Jason. But I did enjoy the setting, the varied characters (except Claudette), and the build up . From the number one bestselling author, Peter James, comes T he Secret of Cold Hill. T he spine-chilling follow-up to The House on Cold Hill. Now a smash-hit stage play.But it’s not fair to compare James to Herbert, because while there are passing similarities, they both hold up on their own. It’s pretty exciting to see James taking on more traditional horror like this because he’s mostly thought of as a crime author because of his Roy Grace books. The Secret of Cold Hill shows that he’s far more versatile than that. During the Second World War, the house was used to billet Canadian soldiers. After the War, during the second half of the twentieth century, three couples bought it – and all subsequently divorced. We were the third. Was the Grey Lady in any way responsible? Jason and Emily Danes move into their new home on Cold Hill, and right away strange things begin to happen. Shadowy figures roam the hallways of the house, thumping noises can be heard from the attic studio, lights turn on and off for no reason. Scariest of all, Jason, an artist, and Emily, a caterer, can hear people talking in their house -- sometimes right in the same room that they're in. Adding to their unease is a sense of isolation resulting from the fact that they are only the second family to have moved into their new housing development.

Classic haunted house characteristics appear during the course of the novel, from ghostly apparitions that disappear as soon as they appear, to sudden temperature drops, stomping feet, cursed voices and unexplained potent aromas add to the issues faced by the new residents of Cold Hill Park. I appreciated the insertion of newspaper reports and even gravestone inscriptions included within the narrative. These extra flourishes add further conjecture to the unfolding tale. It was very cliche, and in many ways was repetitive of the first instalment, but I just wanted a classic "haunted house" book for the lead up to Halloween, and this fit the bill. It did what I wanted it to do; it entertained me.This is a great read with strong characters and an addictive story. There are even touches of humour within the haunting chills. I think it also made me reconsider my rating of the first book, and makes me want to put that down from a 5* to a 3.5*. This book was far stronger. The characters were much better (the snobby, horrible neighbours were awful people but so funny, I kind of warmed to them!) and in terms of the haunting, it was less of a movie-cliche, and far more realistic of true hauntings.