[Review] Elaine Thomson: 'Hawthorn'

In 1871, the Ordnance Survey is charting Scotland's most remote north-easterly county, a bleak landscape of endless moorland and lonely crofts. Then, Cartographer Robert Sutherland tumbles into a bog, and the accident leaves him inches from death. He is taken to Leask House, to recuperate under the care of Mrs. Sinclair and her beautiful daughter, Isabel. Sutherland is treated with copious amounts of laudanum.

As he recovers, Sutherland is plagued by strange occurrences and apparitions, and he thinks that these dreadful visions are the result of the medicines he has been prescribed. But as events take ever stranger and more terrifying turns, Robert begins to wonder whether his presence at Leask House is really a coincidence at all. Someone - or something - has summoned him here.

So, what to make of this book? We know Elaine Thomson from her mysteries that feature Jem Flockhart, the apothecary. This is a novel approach to a route well-travelled: haunting and mysterious. I kept hoping that a tendril of the story would reach out to the universe of Jem Flockart. Not so.

What seems to ail Robert Sutherland? Is the house haunted and wants to keep him sort of hostage? Is one of the occupants of Leask House using their creepy fingers to induce madness? Or is all that happens just a figment of Sutherland's imagination?

It's my rational mind that suspects (or hopes) that Sutherland suffers from a (then unknown) condition called dissociative identity disorder (DID), caused by traumatic experiences and exacerbated by the mind-bending medication he had taken. This disorder was previously called multiple personality disorder (MPD) and is one that might explain the disruptive actions that seemingly happen to the 'other' Sutherland.

I really liked the brooding, moody, and evocative descriptions of the landscape, the forever changing weather, and the interaction between Sutherland and the Sinclairs. Yes, there is some explanation as to what is the cause-and-effect of part of the mystery, but the largest of them remains.

'Hawthorn' is a novel worthy of Elaine Thomson. But, somehow, I missed a protagonist, someone who would find the culprit, explained it all in a rational way, even if it was Sutherland himself.