Book Review- The Orphan Choir

The Orphan
Choir

Sophie
Hannah

(Hammer,
2013)

Louise has a
problem with her neighbour, he keeps playing loud music in the dead
of night further frazzling her nerves which are already on edge due
to her son, a talented chorister, being away at school. At least she
thinks its her neighbour, only his taste is for cheesy pop music and
the music that is disturbing her sleep is made by a choir of
children. When the chance comes to move to an idyllic gated community
Louise jumps at it; there is only one problem, the choir follows her
and only she can hear it singing.

Produced in
association with Hammer, the film studio that introduced British film
goers to the camp delights of gothic horror and the incredible lung
capacity of Ingrid Pitt. In recent years the studio has been revived
and now styles itself as the home of' 'smart horror', a category into
which this book fits neatly.

Louise, her
son and the other characters in Hannah's writing aren't the usual
type you find in horror fiction, meaning cardboard cut-outs who exist
mostly to get seriously scared and then come to a bad end. They are
rounded human beings rather like her readers with mundane hopes and
frustrations who have somehow ended up in a world that has gone mad.

As ever
Hannah shows a remarkable facility for creating psychological
tension, in her books less is very much more. A tactic that here
makes the twist that moves things from the merely spooky to the truly
terrifying all the more shocking.

This is a
clever, frequently unsettling and always rewarding book, not least
because its author finds the stuff of nightmares in the most ordinary
places and people.