Two men, centuries apart, dream of being a wolf.
One is burned at the stake.
Another is locked in a psychiatric hospital for most of his life.
And Annie Jackson is about to find out why…
Vowing once again to remove herself from society, Annie is back living alone in her little cottage by the shores of a loch. But when an old enemy – now locked up in a high security hospital – comes calling, begging her to find the son that she was forced to give up at the age of seventeen, Annie is tempted out of seclusion. The missing boy holds the key to ending Annie’s curse, and he may be the only chance that both she and Lewis have of real happiness.
Annie and Lewis begin an investigation that takes them back to the past, a time etched in Scottish folklore, a period of history that may just be repeating itself. And what they uncover could destroy not just some of the most powerful people in the country, who will stop at nothing to protect their wealth and their secrets, but also Annie’s life, and everything she holds dear…
Dark, immersive, and utterly compelling, The Howling is a story of deception, betrayal, and misplaced power, and a reminder that the most public of faces can hide the darkest of hearts…
Sometimes a book comes along that lures you in with mood. The Howling is one of those books: it begins in whisper, then the dread creeps up, and before you realise you’re leaning forward, heart in throat, turning pages in half-light.
From its opening, the author masterfully blends folklore with a modern, very human grief. Annie Jackson, our protagonist, is living in retreat by a loch, trying to escape her past — both the painful personal loss and the legacy of a curse she believes has shaped her life. Malone doesn’t rush into horror for horror’s sake: the mundane and the supernatural are interwoven so that one way of seeing the world (the “real”) shades into the uncanny and more peculiar.
The setting, as in all three of the books in this series, is beautifully evoked. There’s something in the loch, in the old buildings, in the whisper of old stones and old wrongs, that I found very compelling. The landscape itself feels like a character: cold, secretive, capable of holding generations of hurt. For readers who love a gothic edge, the way he situates this story in this rural space works really well.
Annie Jackson is complex and haunted; she is not always likeable, but she is always believable. Her guilt, grief, desire for redemption — these are tangible, and the author gives them weight. Lewis; her companion in much of the investigation, brings a contrast: he is less tortured, more hopeful in places, but burdened in his own way. Their relationship is not sugarcoated; there are frictions, misunderstandings, loyalties tested.
Highly recommended by me.
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