Take Disney, for instance.
Jafar has nothing on that first offering of an evil stepmother in Snow White. Nor could Mufasa's treacherous brother, Scar, ever truly conjure up a bad case of the heebie-jeebies like that wicked fairy, Maleficent. These older villains weren't misunderstood underlings in an unfair monarch, or the black sheep of proud bloodlines, acting out on their insecurities. They were Cruel. Evil. Dark. End of character.
This got me thinking as to the role of a good - and by 'good', I mean of course, uncompromisingly dastardly! - villain in the stories we share.
Neil Gaiman once remarked that he found it interesting how the dobbelganger parents of his story's heroine, Coraline, were perceived of as terrifying by older audiences, while to their younger counterparts, they were no more than part of the adventure. Or rather, they were no more than part-and-parcel of the trying circumstances to be overcome and defeated before the novel's end.
Invigorating, certainly...
Even undoubtedly unnerving...
But never, no, never, altogether insurmountable.
And when it comes to the literary crevices and dark, cobble-stoned paths that unnerve and invigorate me, perhaps none achieve this so much as the Gothic world...
Victorian London streets crawling with Hyde-esque figures, country houses harbouring mad women in their bell towers, Poe's midnight ravens, and angelic men with portraits growing evermore grotesque...
These are the things that make me, as reader, shiver with thrills of anticipation.
So when Mariah Mundi and the Ghost Diamonds began with a man walking "nervously in and out of the long, dark shadows," I knew that one of my lesser-guilty pleasures was about to be fulfilled. And our dark stranger continues, from an alleyway and into "an old street of narrow cottages," "wet feet" leaving a "trail of footprints across stone steps" while "with his cane he marked out each step." He pauses at a "misted window," where two children are "huddled beside the fire."
"Shall these be the ones?" the man asks of this dark and brooding evening, in a "voice of gravel."
"Too small..." comes the reply. "Not even enough meat to fill a mouse."
Indeed, I murmur to myself (in a voice not unlike that of Chris Priestley's famous Uncle Montague...or at least how I've always heard him in my head), how delightful.
Cut to our protagonist, Mariah Mundi, who is as much reminiscent of a 'Holmes', as he is the 'new Harry Potter' (so hailed by critics). A young boy, orphaned by his parents' untimely and rather mysterious deaths, Mariah comes to stay at the Prince Regent, a hotel built into a seaside cliff-face. Here he is placed under the care of Captain Jack Charity, and taken in as a magician's apprentice, with the added assistance of friend (and potential romantic interest), the headstrong Sacha. However, it does not take Mariah long to become the youngest member of the Bureau of Antiquities, an organization founded to protect the world's most ancient and precious wonders, wonders that could be devastating in the wrong hands.
The appeal of the Prince Regent is not lost on me. Old, and oft-times superstitious, sea-side villages make for some of the best Gothic tales... Steely-grey waters and craggy hills, with crustaceous cottages buried into their resistant foundations, birthing people as crab-like as their homes, and as distrusting as the land.
In Priestely's Tales From the Black Ship, readers hold their breath as brother and sister, Ethan and Cathy, are left alone in their father's Old Inn as a wild storm rages around them, all until an ominous stranger comes seeking refuge... A similar backdrop is painted in the details here,as Mariah looks on the Regent from a distance, "trac[ing] the pattern of the lamps upon the far bridge that straddl[e] the ravine" that carry his eyes to the four towers "reach[ing] up and touch[ing] the dark clouds swept in from sea." However, the Regent's air of opulence adds yet another enthralling (and at times, eerily other-worldly) layer to G.P. Taylor's narrative, as "even at that great distance," Mariah is able to hear "the chords and swirls of the orchestra that played each night for those who cared to dance."
But the opulence is disturbed when prominent guests begin to internally combust, one after the other, in a manner too uncanny to be disconnected. The stage is thus set for drama, intrigue, and danger, as the young but relentless figure of Mariah takes it upon himself to solve this, the mystery of the Ghost Diamonds, thwarted all the way by the threatening powers that seek to possess them.
As the winter nights begin to ensconce those of us living on the Southern shores, child or not, I warmly recommend as a tonic for the vital soul, that you cocoon yourself in blankets, or toast your feet at the fire (real or imagined), with this fine 'Whodunnit' in hand. You'll be hard-pressed to avoid the sound of sea-borne wind whipping at your ears, as Taylor's narrator pulls you towards the Prince Regent Hotel and all the secrets that its encroaching waters hold, hoping that for Mariah, his dauntingly dark circumstances may not prove insurmountable.
