Chapelwood

[sawyl]

Following on up last year's Maplecroft, the first of the month saw the release Chapelwood, the second in Cherie's Priest's series of horror novels centred around a fictional version of Lizzie Borden. Set in Birmingham, Alabama some thirty years after the events of the first book, the story focuses on a branch of the Ku Klux Klan who seem intent on combining racism with the worship of some sort of Lovecraftian horror that promises to bring about the end of the world.

At the centre of the story is Ruth Stephenson. A young woman of twenty-one with a violent father, Ruthie turns to the local catholic priest when her pa takes up with Reverend Davies and his church at Chapelwood. In a bid to keep Ruth safe, Father James Coyle arranges for her to marry another member of his congregation, Pedro Gussman. In a fury Edwin Stephenson shoots Father James dead on the steps of his church.

Inspector Simon Wolf, who isn't exactly a policeman, receives a letter from his old friend James Coyle at almost exactly the same time as he learns of the priest's death. Already intrigued by the news of a crazed axe murderer who also seems to be stalking the streets of Birmingham, Wolf heads down south to see if he can help with the investigation. Upon arrival he realise that the fix has already gone in: thanks to a rigged election, most of the town's officials are in the process of being replaced by Chapelwood acolytes and it is pretty clear Edwin Stephenson is well on his way to being cleared by a jury of his peers. Doggedly Wolf carries investigating the axe murders, only to turn up an odd clue: a survivor from one of the attacks has drawn a pencil sketch of someone who looks an awful lot like Nance O'Neil, Lizzie Borden's long-lost girlfriend.

Meanwhile, back in Fall River, Lizzie Borden — now calling herself Lizbeth Andrew — has also been taking an interest in events down south, largely because of her renewed interest in spiritualism and psychical research. So when Wolf realises that the axe murders and the portrait are a clue from providence and decides to call for Lizzie's assistance, she is only too happy to oblige. The pair make a formidable duo with their complementary skill sets and they soon become firm friends with Ruth Stephenson Gussman, with the previous city president, and with its former police chief.

Where Maplecroft was very much about Lizzie Borden, with Simon Wolf as a minor character, Chapelwood is very much Wolf's novel. Consequently we learn a lot more about his slippery background a member of the Quiet Society — an organisation with shades of the BPRD about it! — his cover as a police inspector, and his discovery that he very much likes Southern cooking. With his acute memory and easy way with people, Wolf is the consumate investigator, while his willingness to believe the unlikely-sounding account of a man who suffered a brain injury after being attacked by the axe murderer makes him the perfect man for the job.

One interesting feature of Chapelwood is the way it inverts H.P. Lovecraft's standard attitude to race: here the worshipers of the nameless horrors are all white, anglo-saxon, protestant (of a sort) males, while those on the side of humanity and righteousness are catholic, female, Puerto Rican, Irish, Jewish, or, worst of all, New Englanders. The oppressive culture of the south in the 1920s comes into its own in the court scenes, when Ruth Stephenson is called to testify against her father; both the judge and the defence lawyer are active klansmen, the entirely male jury are kitted out in badges marking them as supporters of the True Americans branch of the klan, while even the rather lackadaisical prosecuting attorney admits to having been a member in the past.

Chapelwood is an excellent gothic horror with a solid cast of characters who, where they are based on real people, have diverged sufficiently far from their templates — Priest's reality, Emma Borden has been dead since shortly after the events of Maplecroft while Nance O'Neil has been gone for even longer — as to remove any concerns about rooting for someone who was accused — and famously acquitted — of a couple of murders.