Cold Shoulder Road

[sawyl]

The second of Is Twite's adventures, Joan Aiken's Cold Shoulder Road follows closely on from the events of Is and the destruction of the chthonic town of New Blastburn in a tsunami.

Having returned to Blackheath from Blastburn, Is Twite sets out to reunite her cousin Arun with his mother. Together the pair travel to Cold Shoulder Road in Folkestone, where Ruth Twite was last known to be living, only to find the house empty but for a large number of paintings. After putting the paintings in the care of a retired admiral, the pair follow the trail of Silent Sect — the selectively mute group of zealots to which Hosiah and Ruth belonged — to their new home in Seagate. Here they encounter the sinister Elder, Dominic de la Twite — who may or may not be a distant relation — and discover that Arun's mother has vanished along with the child held hostage by the local band of smugglers, Merry Gentry, to prevent the locals from tattling.

In Cold Shoulder Road, Aiken returns to the Silent Sect, briefly established an almost mute religious group in Is, expanding on it and showing just what can happen to a group of believers when things go bad. It creates the character of Ruth Twite, whose artistic sensibilities were oppressed by her religion and her husband, and greatly expands the role of Penelope Twite, finally giving her a chance to step beyond the brief supporting parts she plays in the previous books. The plot, with definite echoes of Russell Thorndike, is complex with crosses and double crosses and people hunted down on the basis of misinformation and exaggerated rumour.

As ever, Aiken's sharp eye for detail makes even the strangest locations seem real: the titular Cold Shoulder Road, it's run-down shacks with walls so thin you can hear the domestic abuse from next-door; the wreck of the frigate Throstle, firmly embedded in a tree by the tidal wave that destroyed Holderness in Is; a child hung kept in a cage over the channel tunnel railway line to ensure the good behaviour of the locals. Then there's the eccentric Admiral Fishskin, with his cluttered house patrolled by over-sized spiders and his cantilevered garden projecting out over the edge of the cliff, who has somehow also found the time to experiment with kites and to invent something that sounds a lot like a bicycle.

An enjoyable late addition to the canon.