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1970s: Some secrets are meant to stay on that island…
The Darkest Place
What you need to know before your trail
Christmas day, and DCI Tom Reynolds receives an alarming call. A mass grave has been discovered on Oileán na Caillte, the island which housed the controversial psychiatric institution St. Christina’s. The hospital has been closed for decades and onsite graves were tragically common. Reynolds thinks his adversarial boss is handing him a cold case to sideline him.
But then it transpires another body has been discovered amongst the dead – one of the doctors who went missing from the hospital in mysterious circumstances forty years ago. He appears to have been brutally murdered.
As events take a sudden turn, nothing can prepare Reynolds and his team for what they are about to discover once they arrive on the island . . .
Travel Guide
Oileán na Caillte off the coast of Country Kerry
Oileán na Caillte
‘Island of the Lost was the isle’s name long before the hospital was built. In winter, they say the fog falls so heavy there that you can’t see your hand in front of your face. Storms rage so forcefully you can be blown from the cliffs. Once St. Christina’s was built, the name took on a new meaning. Very few who went into that place ever left.’
Thank goodness this island and the asylum are fictional as OMG. However as the author says in her note at the end, there were asylums and places like the ones described in the novel and says that although the novel and story are fiction, the texture is based on fact. She says to just google ‘mental health care in Ireland’ to read some of the shocking stories she did as part of her research.
“Ireland is very good at coming up with institutions or those society doesn’t want. The Magdalene Laundries, the Mother and Baby homes..etc.”
The island is creepy and foreboding. the journey over to the island from the Kerry coast is one you will never forget and then once inside that asylum…..there are shadows, ghosts of patients who were trapped, tortured, raped and goodness knows what else. There’s screams as you turn the page and some very disturbing scenes. Those which take place off the page, the most scary of all.
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
Well that title is spot on.
This takes you to a VERY dark place – an asylum on an island, only accessible by boat at ceertain times, tales of goodness knows what going on inside these walls. The asylum is only investigated when a doctor who used to work there, who went missing 40 years ago, is found in a mass grave on site and it’s clear he’s been murdered…
Well that was just the start. This has shades of Jo’s other books but with a hint of Shutter Island and something from Stephen King. The whole visit to this island is creepy to the extreme – well it is an abandoned asylum for a start..but there are many people still living here, who used to work there. There ‘s a LOT of secrets, dark corners, strange noises and shadows passing across the wall. Seems to be a place where the sunshine is even scared of. This woman can build atmosphere like noone else. The scenes set in the past in particular when the asylum was a working institution are brrrrrrr illiant.
Put this on your TBR list and I think its apt that the book is out in September, as this book and the autumn shade are bound to join forces to create a very chilling reading experience!
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Darkest Place
Destination : Co Kerry, fictional Oileán na Caillte Author/Guide: Jo Spain Departure Time:1970s, 2000s
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