The Stranger House

by Reginald Hill

A stunning new psychological thriller set in past and present-day Cumbria from the award-winning author of the Dalziel and Pascoe series.

Things move slowly in the tiny village of Illthwaite, but that’s about to change with the arrival of two strangers. Sam Flood is a young Australian post-grad en route to Cambridge. Miguel Madero is a Spanish historian in flight from a seminary. They have nothing in common and no connection, except that they both want to dig up bits of the past that some people would rather keep buried. Sam is looking for information about her grandmother who left Illthwaite courtesy of the child migrant scheme four decades earlier. The past Mig is interested in is more than four centuries old.

They meet in the village pub, the Stranger House, a remnant of the old Illthwaite Priory. They can find nothing to agree on. Sam believes that anything that can’t be explained by math isn’t worth explaining; Mig sees ghosts; Sam is a fun-loving, experienced young woman; Mig is a 26-year-old virgin. But once their paths cross, they become increasingly entangled as they pursue what at first seem to be separate quests, finding out the hard way who to trust and who to fear in this ancient village.

The action is fast, there are clashes physical and metaphysical, and shocks natural and supernatural, as the tension mounts to an explosive climax. But fans of Reginald Hill’s will not be surprised to find a few laughs along the way. And very loyal fans might even recognize a ghost from the very distant past. . . .

• ISBN10: 0770429890
• ISBN13: 9780770429898
• Publish Date: 28 November 2006 (first published 4 July 2005)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: CA
• Imprint: Seal Books
• Format: Paperback (US Mass Market)
• Pages: 544
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/isbn/9780770429898

Reviews

[empressbrooke]

Reginald Hill has written dozens of books, but this is the first one that I have read. The Stranger House follows two people, Australian mathematician Samantha Flood and Spanish ex-almost-priest Miguel Madero, who travel to a small British town called Illthwaite to search out the history of their respective families. The novel is filled with a lot of coincidences, a small dash of the supernatural, a bunch of eccentric and memorable characters, and so many twists that you're still twisting in the final pages.

It could be really preposterous, the way that Sam and Miguel arrive at the exact same moment with interlocking stories. However, if you take Miguel at his word that ghosts have guided him through his life to this moment, and accept this as a semi-ghost story, it becomes easier to swallow as well as a more interesting story.

I liked the relationships between everyone, and I especially liked that the female lead is a mathematical genius. How often does someone create a female character like that? There is also a generous sprinkling of various parts of history, which is always a plus. I'm definitely going to check out a few more of Hill's novels, including a long-running series about Yorkshire detectives.