Rotherweird
by Andrew Caldecott
This is another of those books that comes across my desk with very little information that I always find myself drawn to. Perhaps it’s the allure of the unknown and the ability to start a book with no expectations or even a clue about what you’re going to get. It could also be that the last few mystery books have been so good that I keep diving in, hoping for another interesting surprise. I’m pleased to say that Rotherweird definitely delivered. The flippant way to describe it would be as a Midsomer Murders episode as told by Jeff VanderMeer with a touch of Agatha Christie. That doesn’t do it justice though because joking aside it’s a very good book.
We begin with a moment in time, some four hundred and fifty years ago and a group of children. They are unusual, and for that they are by Royal Order condemned. Fate intervenes and as a result, ten years later the rural English town of Rotherweird is the subject of another Royal Order utterly unprecedented in English history. Today you won’t find Rotherweird on maps or in guidebooks of quaint country towns, because it’s not there. The Locals don’t leave and strangers are very rarely invited in. One of those strangers is Jonah Oblong, unemployed teacher. Having been thoroughly chewed up and spat out by the harsh realities of the modern urban school system Jonah thought himself unlikely to find another position. Their willingness to hire him however is just the first of the eccentricities he encounters in Rotherweird, Engaged as a history teacher he is told that no history pre-1800 may be presented, or discussed by city statute. This is doubly odd, since the town looks and feels like it’s stuck in the past, despite no-one being able to talk about it. There is also the mystery of his predecessor also an outsider, who disappeared under what could only be called strange circumstances. There is something going on in Rotherweird, something ancient and dangerous. A secret that must be kept at all costs, and Jonah has stumbled right into the middle of it.
Sir Veronal Slickstone is a man of considerable wealth and power and little scruple and he too has come to Rotherweird, drawn by a compulsion he can’t quite define. There is something here he wants and Slickstone only ever wants power. And perhaps answers, because beneath his accumulation of money and influence there is a mystery about him that not even he holds the key to. Somehow he knows that here in Rotherweird he will find both the truth about himself and a power beyond imagining and he will do anything required to get them.
Rotherweird is a place of secrets and deception, where no-one and nothing is necessarily what it appears to be. There are old things here best left hidden and terrible deeds best left forgotten and the whole town is a void, purpose-built filled with people who unknowingly or deliberately keep the past from invading the future. Until now.