The Family Plot
Cherie Priest
ebook $2.99
paperback $15.99
Here’s a little something seasonal. And by little, I mean the length of the review, not the length of the book.
Cherie Priest is someone whose work I’ve reviewed here before, namely the Borden Dispatches, Maplecroft and Chapelwood. Before I started this blog, I’d read Four and Twenty Blackbirds and Wings to the Kingdom. So I knew Ms. Priest could write ghost stories and do them right.
The Family Plot is a stand-alone novel, but it’s one I could see becoming a series, depending on what happens after the final sentence…
Chuck Dutton owns Music City Salvage, and times are lean. He needs a big score. So when the elderly Augusta Winthrop walks in and makes him an offer that sounds too good to be true, Chuck doesn’t question things as much as he should.
Augusta offers him salvage rights to the family mansion, which is due to be torn down in a few weeks. She’s the last member of the family, and she has no interest in keeping the structure. There’s a barn and a carriage house that haven’t been opened in years. Chuck can have anything he finds.
He has to put the company at risk, but he manages to come up with the fee Augusta is asking for salvage rights. He sends his daughter Dahlia on ahead to get started on the job, accompanied by her cousin, his son, and a hired hand.
Things don’t go well. It’s not long before multiple ghosts begin to make their presence known. None of them are named Casper, and some of them aren’t very friendly.
The Winthrop family has a history, and it’s not a happy history. For instance, there was the daughter in the WWI era who swore on the night before her wedding that she’d never had a child and the devil could take her if that wasn’t true. She was never seen again after that night.
Then there’s the cemetery on the property that Augusta forgot to mention…
There are some wonderfully creepy scenes in The Family Plot. Many of the usual haunted house tropes are in play. In the hands of a lesser writer, they would be cliched. Priest takes them and breathes fresh life into them. She also adds her own twists. When you find out what’s going on with the temperature in the shower, well, I got chills.
The salvage company makes a great literary vehicle to explore haunted houses. I’m kinda surprised no one has thought of it before (or if they have, I’m not aware of it.) If you’re looking for a scary read this Halloween, you should check this one out.