Blog Tour: The Murmurs – Michael J Malone

On the first morning of her new job at Heartfield House, a care home for the elderly, Annie Jackson wakens from a terrifying dream. And when she arrives at the home, she knows that the first old man she meets is going to die.

How she knows this is a terrifying mystery, but it is the start of horrifying premonitions … a rekindling of the curse that has trickled through generations of women in her family – a wicked gift known only as ‘the murmurs’…

With its reappearance comes an old, forgotten fear that is about to grip Annie Jackson.

And this time, it will never let go…

Michael Malone is a prize-winning poet and author who was born and brought up in the heart of Burns’ country. He has published over 200 poems in literary magazines throughout the UK, including New Writing Scotland, Poetry Scotland and Markings. Blood Tears, his bestselling debut novel won the Pitlochry Prize from the Scottish Association of Writers. His dark psychological thriller, A Suitable Lie, was a number-one bestseller, and is currently in production for the screen, and five powerful standalone thrillers followed suit. A former Regional Sales Manager (Faber & Faber) he has also worked as an IFA and a bookseller. Michael lives in Ayr, where he also works as a hypnotherapist.

My thoughts: this was so good, creepy and weird and at times incredibly sad. Annie seems to have inherited the family curse, last seen in her aunt Bridget, a woman she never met. When she meets certain people, their faces become skulls and a voice whispers in her ear, telling how they’re going to die.

Annie was in a terrible accident as a child, in which her mum died, and lost all her memories of life before that point. With her twin brother Lewis, she sets out to find out what happened, to her, to the aunts they never knew and solve the family curse, before it drives her mad, as it supposedly did her aunt and great-grandmother.

Interspersed with diary extracts of a 17th century ancestor, to explain the curse’s origins, Annie and Lewis carefully unwind the past – with the few reminders their parents left behind, including some photos.

This journey into the past reconnects them with the town they lived in as children, and their old neighbours. But it also puts Annie in terrible danger, can Lewis, and a convicted murderer, save her or will Annie be able to save herself?

I was completely hooked by Annie’s story, and Bridget’s too, sad and lonely, but utterly loved, both women struggled with their strange gift, and not always to the happiest of ends, but Annie’s might just be freedom and joy thanks to her other mysterious aunt, Sheila.

Family secrets cast long shadows in this book, if only Annie and Lewis hadn’t had to wait till adulthood, and become orphans, before learning the truth about their family and the women they come from. Religion and the persecution of witches, Scottish history and murder all meet in this beguiling and inventive book.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.