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Title: The Stranger House
Author: Reginald Hill
Narrator: Gordon Griffin
Format: Unabridged
Length: 16 hrs and 31 mins
Language: English
Release date: 09-11-06
Publisher: Whole Story Audiobooks
Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 138 votes
Genres: Mysteries & Thrillers, Suspense
Publisher's Summary:
For years, the Stranger House has stood in the village of Illthwaite, offering refuge to travellers. People like Sam, a brilliant young mathematician, who believes that anything that can't be explained by maths isn't worth explaining. And Miguel, a historian running from a priests' seminary, who sees ghosts. Sam is an experienced young woman, Miguel a 26-year-old virgin. But both want to dig up bits of the past that some people would rather keep buried. As they uncover intertwining tales of murder, betrayal, and love, they must put aside their differences to find the dark mysteries at the heart of this ancient place.
©2006 Reginald Hill; (P)2006 W F Howes Ltd
Critic Reviews:
"A mystery novel, but far more than that. It's gripping...Hill is wonderful." (The Times)
Members Reviews:
This story gets more intriguing as it progresses
I'm a big fan of Reginald Hill and this is one of his best. I had just seen the film "Oranges and Sunshine" so very pertinent to the storyline
an OK read
This wasn't a bad book, but overall I was underwhelmed. The narration was good, which gives it points as an audiobook, but the story fell a little flat. The background stories of the central characters and even the second-tier characters were actually pretty interesting. The problem was that they were infinitely more interesting than the two main characters, themselves. They were quite two dimentional, and I found myself not really caring what happened with them. And the constant relating of everything in Sam's narrative to a math problem....gack.
Scrappy heroine, pleasingly complex mystery
Well written and crafted thriller, which uses the classic chestnut of the remote village, with residents who distrust nosy outsiders, to great effect. You think this is going to be an old-fashioned horror, with restless ghosts and forbidden, pagan rites still practiced by the weird locals. In fact, it's a modern, psychological drama, its twists attributable to very human fears and desires. Some of the crimes may be too modern for certain listeners: If you are bothered by stories that involve hurting children or torture, be aware that this narrative takes a few dark turns. Nothing overly graphic, but it does go there, if not all the way there.
There are two mysteries here, one historical, one contemporary, each with its related protagonist, a compassionate Spanish ex-priest and a scrappy, Australian mathematician named Samantha Flood. Sam Flood is almost worth the price of admission alone -- she's that appealing.
Great reading by Gordon Griffin, who differentiates the many characters with vocal distinctions and quirks. I had no trouble keeping the large cast straight.
My only complaint is that the epilogue, while intriguing, ties up the threads too neatly. Still, the rest of the story is so good that I'm willing to forgive Reginald Hill for this over-zealous bit of plot writing.
Not one of his best
Absolutely loved The Woodcutter and many of the Dalziel books, but I had to force myself to stick with this one all the way through. I'm not sure how much of the problem is attributable to the Writer and how much to the Narrator but the story doesn't gell. I guess it would be best described as a local history book, but it is fairly slow moving.