Prophecy - Hardcover

James, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312105266 ISBN 13: 9780312105266

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 1994

Synopsis

Archaeologist Frannie Monsanto does not see the threads tying widower Oliver Halkin and his son to a series of strange predictions made by a Ouija board six years ago, until the bloody prophecies start to come true

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Reviews

Horror novelist James ( Twilight ) slowly reveals the connections between a 17th-century necromancer, an archeologist, an actuary, the number 26, a series of horrific accidents and a Ouija session in this complex tale of evil. British museum archeologist Francesca Monsanto meets actuary Oliver Halkin and his son, Edward, at a train station. Unbeknownst to either of them, Oliver, the 24th Marquess of Sherfield, stepped into Francesca's parents' sandwich shop on March 26, 1988, minutes before his wife was hit by a truck and decapitated. Coincidentally, the shop was built on the site of the original London residence of the Halkin family, where, on March 26, 1652, Francis Halkin, second Marquess of Sherfield (who was a necromancer, child-rapist and murderer), was executed by Parliamentary soldiers. In the present day, a romance ensues between Francesca and Oliver. Meanwhile, an eerie series of tragic coincidences begins to afflict the participants in a Ouija game organized by Francesca in 1988. The shocking ending of the work is neatly related to the motto carved on the Halkin family crest: Non Omnis Moriar , I shall not altogether die.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

``Fear pressed to her skin like brass against tracing paper, rubbing dark lines across her face....An ambulance flashed across, ahead, its siren a swirling banshee that beat her stomach like an egg whisk.'' Nicely done! James will find this--his fifth horror novel-- hard to match, since its strengths arise from its modesty, its unwillingness to go for broke at each horror, and--relative to the genre--a creepy realism. Once again, he creates an androgynously named heroine, this time Frannie (in Dreamer it was ``Sam'' for Samantha, in Possession Alex, etc.). Whether this all stems from James' wife being named Georgina is anyone's guess, but he must have a superb female research assistant since he deals in detail with the feminine, from a woman's psychology of clothing, to the erectility of downy hairs, and even to the swoon of her inner organs in a rising elevator. The reader feels plunged into Frannie, an archaeologist in the British Museum, who finds that her parents' cafe has been built on the site of a vast number of murders by a 16th-century pedophile. Synchronicity has it that she falls in love with Oliver Halkin, the current eldest male descendant of the murderer who left a pool of evil under Frannie's folks' cafe. Three years ago while helping out her parents as a waitress, Frannie served Oliver and his son Edward some drinks just minutes before Oliver's wife was beheaded in a motor accident outside the cafe. Is troubled young Edward inhabited by his lingering ancestor, who set up the mother to be killed before the child's eyes? Meanwhile, Frannie's college buddies who once joined her around a Ouija board in the cafe's cellar drop like flies--and the numbers say it's now Frannie's turn to face the blood lust of a living evil... Stupid? Sure. But smart writing keeps it gripping all the way. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

British Museum archaeologist Frannie Monsanto meets widowed mathematician Oliver Halkin. As they become involved, Frannie grows concerned about the odd behavior of Oliver's son, Edward. Strange links appear between Frannie's family history and that of Oliver's noble forebears while, simultaneously, a series of tragedies strikes down too many of both Frannie's college friends and Oliver's family. Edward gradually becomes the apparent focus of the dreadful events at the Halkins' ancestral castle and in London, and as calamities continue, it is disclosed that the ghost of Oliver's seventeenth-century ancestor, the second marquess of Sherfield, is exerting baleful influence on events. Finally, Frannie returns to her childhood origins--geographical and spiritual--to lay the ghost to rest. James is touted as Britain's Stephen King, and this story of arcane horror amid everyday lives and landscapes fosters the comparison. Dennis Winters

Edition details

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312105266
• ISBN 13: 9780312105266
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 280