The pace picked up half way through, drawing all the elements together for an explosive ending that had me rereading it several times to come to terms with it all.

Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders, Kate’s first book, won the Stylist/Faber crime writing competition. When she meets her ten-year-old charge, Marta is surprised at Grace’s appearance (she has encountered the moonface features before) and that she is virtually non-verbal. Marta very much looks down on the other characters in the book and her sense of superiority will not appeal to some readers. As befitting of a gothic book set in a location; Fyneshade itself almost feels like a character - living and breathing as much as Marta, its protagonist. Marta experiences the house as a ‘maze of stone'; the house exudes an unusually hushed, and suffocating atmosphere.The Brönte sisters were one of the reasons I went to study English, and to this day Jane Eyre is among one of my favourite books. What starts as a familiar storyline with a character you’d expect to be sympathetic towards soon twists as governess, Marta reveals a real nasty side. Could Marta, rather than being a beautiful, alluring, bewitching and unique woman, really be a little brown mouse of a governess trying to glamorise her postings?

crashing down and she was at the receiving end of some of the tragedy she had previously been happy to dish out.On enquiry, she encounters silence, though she eventually strikes up something of a friendship with the housekeeper, Mrs Gurney. Like the intrepid Gothic heroine she purports to be, Marta is a match for every locked door and secret passageway, but this is the only way she resembles such milk and water scaredy-cats. I love the idea of knowing more about a classic character and their motivations, especially when they have a dark streak.