There’s just something about Simon R. Green’s Ishmael Jones mysteries that appeals to me. Green’s mysteries are as close to horror as I get. The House on Widows Hill, the ninth in the series, is a combination of mystery, aliens, murder, and the unknown. Green has a talent for making it all believable, as if “The truth is out there”, and Ishmael Jones is going to find it.

Ishmael Jones is an alien who crashed to earth in England in 1963. He has no memory of who he used to be. Now, he’s an alien hiding as a human, working for the Organization. Together with the woman he loves, his “partner-in-crime” Penny Belcourt, he investigates weird cases and strange happenings. But, he and Penny had just wrapped up a strange case the day before when they’re given another.

Harrow House on Widows Hill is on the outskirts of Bath. Someone high up in the Organization wants to buy it, but locals are scared to death of the house. No one has lived in it since the Welles family “ran screaming out into the night, on the fourteenth of September 1889.” Even the cab driver, paid an enormous sum to take Ishmael and Penny to the house, has a story about it. But, “Nothing supernatural has ever happened in this house.” Ishmael is skeptical, but he and Penny agree to stay overnight to prove the house isn’t haunted.

There’s one catch. The two experts at monster catching will be spending the night with four amateurs; a celebrity psychic, an amateur ghost chaser with scientific equipment, a white witch who is a local historian, and a newspaper reporter whose family owns Harrow House. When they enter the hosue together, they all feel an “oppressive atmosphere…a definite feeling of dread, and horror, and fear of the unknown.” Even Ishmael feels the urge to leave. He doesn’t like the feel of the house. When one of the group suddenly drops dead, Ishmael doesn’t think it’s an accident. And, despite the feelings of despair that come over them in the house, he is the only one who doesn’t feel the house is to blame.

It’s always interesting to meet up again with Ishmael Jones. Actually, no one would want to meet up with him. Death always seems to follow. But, it’s fascinating to watch him solve mysteries. In some ways, these stories are typical detective novels with a sleuth who gathers suspects together and reveals a killer. However, there’s the added element of vampires or werewolves or monsters or aliens, or even a ghost. It’s just the reader’s choice as to what to believe in Ishmael Jones’ reality.

Right now? The House on Widows Hill sort of captures a reality of horror and despair and mass hysteria. But, Ishmael Jones knows to look behind the smokescreen for the human responsible for death and terror.

Simon R. Green’s website is www.simonrgreen.co.uk

The House on Widows Hill by Simon R. Green. Severn House, 2020. ISBN 9780727890306 (hardcover), 185p.

*****
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