Song of the Damned

Phineas Fox is a music researcher. He’s asked by the headteacher of Cresacre Abbey School to intercede in a rather delicate case. A former pupil is demanding that her late uncle’s opera is performed as part of the school’s bicentenary celebrations – and hinting loudly that if it isn’t, a bursary fund may suffer. But there are strong suspicions that the work plagiarises an earlier opera.

Phin agrees to help, as he needs the money – the service charge on his London flat is due. So with feisty companion and former Cresacre pupil Arabella Tallis in tow, he sets up a meeting at tumbledown Infanger Cottage with eccentric Olivia Tulliver, who is determined that her uncle’s opus will be performed.

But he finds himself investigating more than possible plagiarism, as bizarre legends still weigh heavily on the school, including a strange carving, the disappearance of a group of nuns from the abbey 200 years earlier, and also the identity of the mysterious Ginevra.

Phin first appeared in Death Notes, where a 19th century Russian musical mystery was entwined with modern day Galway in Ireland. Song of the Damned, the third book in the series, also moves between the past and the present, with a fairly hefty selection of flashbacks.

I’d like to have seen much more of Phin with his understated and self-deprecating manner, and those flashback scenes could have taken a cut to ensure the modern day tension is maintained. At times Phin and Arabella (who’s what my grandmother would have called a precocious little madam) seem to be playing second fiddle – so to speak – to the AWOL nuns and the saga of Ginevra.

Sarah Rayne’s strength is her unerring ability to do creepy – it’s not much of a surprise to discover she’s got past form for writing horror stories. It’s not Phil Rickman-style woo-woo here, but chilling menace provided by isolated cottages, sinister legends, unlit paths and some macabre lyrics – and you’ll never see brick walls in the same way again after reading the book. And I’m sure I’m not the only person to find nuns inherently scary!

You’ll need a fairly strong stomach when the nuns’ whereabouts are revealed. I read Song of the Damned in the early hours of the morning when I couldn’t sleep – and had all the lights blazing. And I suddenly went off the idea of sleep when those chilling plot threads were resolved!