John Parker is a Graduate-qualified English/Spanish Teacher, owner and director of CHAT ENGLISH, an English Language Centre in Avilés on the north coast of Spain . A voracious reader, he has particularly loved horror fiction for many years.
Austria, 1978. This novel starts here with a short prologue. We are in an orphanage known as The School. Within the school is a place called The Hive, in which there are 40 infants. And one of those 40, number 39, is different from the rest. Agnes Braun, a nurse charged with looking after these young babes, knows this. And she knows what she must do.
Although this beginning sounds like it could be the start of a horror story, we switch to a quiet village in the Italian Alps where a body has been found in the vicinity in what appears to be a ritualised killing. The body is surrounded by booby traps to prevent animals from touching the body. Inspector Massimo Marini arrives late on his first day with his new unit, headed by Inspector Battaglia. He presumes Battaglia to be a man and humiliates himself in front of his new boss, the decidedly female Superintendent Teresa Battaglia.
Battaglia is a veteran of the police force, in her sixties. She is lonely, overweight and a diabetic. To add to that, her mind seems to be failing her. It could be the onset of Alzheimer’s. So, she is not in a happy place at the moment. Nor does she suffer fools gladly and this is how she sees Marini. It is up to him to prove his worth not only to Teresa but the community as a whole.
The novel is beautifully written, perfectly encapsulating the freezing, wet world of the mountains, while creating evocative scenes in the woods and forests around the area. The man in the woods is not your typical serial killer and as the story unravels, you might even begin to sympathise with him. Lots of great supporting characters but the focus is on Teresa and Massimo. A great story with a satisfying ending.
