PROSPERO'S MIRROR

A completely original, hugely entertaining literary horror story by a young barrister who has been fascinated by the English inventor of the modern horror genre, M R James. And James is the central character of this story, sucked out of a peaceful life in 1936 as Headmaster of Eton into an Oxford college to investigate the provenance of a particularly sinister object, and the mysterious death of the expert who had been looking into it.

The object is an ancient scrying mirror, which has witnessed some gruesome events in its long existence, and whose assumed magic powers have been employed surreptitiously to try to influence the course of history. As his research plunges him back into the dark worlds of medieval arcana he discovers the lost book of the Elizabethan alchemist Dr John Dee, struggling to turn the mirror to good uses; he reads the diary of the Warden of the College in 1665 during the Plague, turning on his freethinking colleague in a state of lethal paranoia; and stumbles on a contemporary plot to get the mirror into the hands of England’s enemies before the next war comes. And finally he has to face up to his own ghosts: the horror stories he has written to frighten others, and the mangled bodies of his young pupils whom he had sent off to slaughter in WW1, who come back to reproach him.

It’s an extraordinary performance, very compact, laying down layers of stories within stories, both horrifying and wittily detached.

Alasdair Donaldson is a barrister with a long-term fascination for M R James. PROSPERO'S MIRROR is his first novel.