The Stranger House

Written by Reginald Hill

Narrated by Richard Dillane

A stunning standalone psychological thriller, set in Cumbria, past and present, from Reginald Hill, one of the UK’s most popular and admired crime novelists

Things move slowly in the village of Illthwaite, but that's about to change with the arrival of two strangers intent on digging up bits of the past the locals would rather keep buried. Sam Flood is a young Australian mathematician whose grandmother was despatched from Illthwaite four decades ago, courtesy of the Child Migrant scheme. Miguel Madero, Sam's fellow guest at the Stranger House inn, is a Spanish wannabe-priest-turned-historian in pursuit of an ancestor last seen setting sail with the Armada in 1588.

The antipathy between them is instant and mutual, but as they follow their separate quests their paths become increasingly entangled, with clashes physical and metaphysical, and shocks natural and supernatural, as the tension mounts to an explosive climax.

All the elements we have come to expect from Reginald Hill's writing – mystery, humour, elegant style, intricate plotting, fascinating characters, and a strong sense of history – combine here to create what must be his finest novel yet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Oct 6, 2011
• ISBN: 9780007460915

Reginald Hill

Reginald Hill, acclaimed English crime writer, was a native of Cumbria and a former resident of Yorkshire, the setting for his novels featuring Superintendent Andy Dalziel and DCI Peter Pascoe. Their appearances won Hill numerous awards, including a CWA Golden Dagger and the Cartier Diamond Dagger Lifetime Achievement Award. The Dalziel and Pascoe stories were also adapted into a hugely popular BBC TV series. Hill died in 2012.

Reviews for The Stranger House

[darkchocolate_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Impossible to put this book down.. Reginald Hill is endlessly inventive. Two very diverse and fascinating characters meet in an old inn, both searching for information from the past, with surprising results.

[ezwicky_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is an uncharacteristic Reginald Hill, neither as openly slapstick nor as deep in other directions as his mainline mysteries. It borders on romance, but is saved by classic Hill twists. Nonetheless, it's startling to see a Reginald Hill where a character has stigmata -- psychic things happen in this book. A fun read, but may not appeal to fans of the Dalziel novels.

[elizabethanns_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Most enjoyable. Kept me reading til after midnight.Totally different feel from his D&P series. Just as well crafted.

[annafdd_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Fun, but lightweight.

[ehines_20 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A supernatural/crytographical/archaelogical/historical mystery broadly in the mode that was quite popular post Da Vinci Code. This one enriched by the setting (a Cumberland village) and the more than usually competent execution. Not that there aren't problems: the two lead characters are not good enough to carry the weight of the narrative, but they are saved by some interesting and better-done peripheral characters. There's an arbitrariness to the plot which really demands a more prominent role for some notion of providence, but Hill seems ambivalent about this and even appears to rehash some of the religious arguments surrounding the works of Richard Dawkins. Not great by any stretch, but an engaging read.

[binniebee · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A very different type of story, but one I really enjoyed reading.

[thorold_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is basically Hamlet-without-the-prince. At the blacker end of Hill's crime fiction, but still within the range of things he covers in his Dalziel and Pascoe novels. But without Dalziel and Pascoe, which is fair enough, given that Hill has been churning out D&P novels for the last forty years: he deserves a break. Unfortunately, he doesn't really give us much to fill the gap.The two young strangers-in-town who act as POV characters, an Australian mathematician and a Spanish historian, are lively and interesting. However, like Hill's younger police officers in the more recent D&P novels, they don't quite work as convincing characters. He does a much more convincing job with the older characters - the pub landlady, the squire, the smith. With his usual knack for picking the brighter moments in British history, this book takes the forced deportation of British children to Australia in the 1950s and 60s as one central theme, and the persecution of Roman Catholic priests under Elizabeth I as another. All set, naturally, in a small Cumbrian village where people have been keeping their dark secrets hidden for far too long.The story comes loaded with a certain amount of mythical portentousness and supernatural visions, which aren't quite essential to the story, but are also not quite explained away as nonsense. This leaves us with the uncomfortable feeling that the author might be expecting us to take the hocuspocus seriously, something I wouldn't have thought a writer in Hill's position and with his undoubted technical skill needed to resort to. So: good by most standards, but not quite up to what one might expect from Hill.

[mrtall_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ooooh! It's a spooky old village, with lots o' odd folk -- and they've got secrets: dark, dark secrets that go way, way back. The Stranger House is Reginald Hill's entry in a genre which has no name I know, but that corresponds to my description above. English faux historical madcap mystery? Something like that. Anyway, in this one two outsiders come searching for history in the Cumbrian village of Illthwaite, and both of course find more than they bargained for, including, naturally, each other. Chock full of eccentrics, intrigue and epiphanies, The Stranger House is a diverting read, but not nearly up to the standard of Hill's Dalziel and Pascoe police procedurals.Recommended only if you like this sort of book.

[cathyskye · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Protagonist(s): Sam Flood, an Australian math whiz, and Miguel Madero, a history scholarSetting: an isolated Cumbrian village in EnglandMystery standaloneSamantha "Sam" Flood visits the isolated village of Illthwaite in Cumbria before attending graduate school in Cambridge, hoping to discover the origins of her grandmother who emigrated from the place as a child. Miguel "Mig" Madero, former novice priest now a history scholar, seeks the link between an ancestor who disappeared during the defeat of the Spanish Armada and a Catholic Illthwaite family. The quirky villagers know more than they're letting on. Sam and Mig find themselves joining forces when their searches intersect. This book spans 400 years and is related by several narrators who gradually make sense of the mystery. Although too long and repetitive and lightly seasoned with coincidence, I found myself enthralled. This was my first Reginald Hill book, and it won't be my last.

[edwardsgt · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I was unsure about this when I started, with people seeing ghosts from the 16th century, but actually I really enjoyed it because it is an excellently written thriller, which draws on a number of interesting historical facts. These include recusancy (essentially persecution of non C of E faiths from 16-19th century, mainly but not exclusively Catholics) and the forcible transport of orphans to Australia from the UK in the 20th century. Hill skilfully weaves these elements into a gripping tale set in Cumbria that makes you want to keep reading until the very end. Highly recommended.

[brookeashley-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Reginald Hill has written dozens of books, but this is the first one that I have read. The Stranger House follows two people, Australian mathematician Samantha Flood and Spanish ex-almost-priest Miguel Madero, who travel to a small British town called Illthwaite to search out the history of their respective families. The novel is filled with a lot of coincidences, a small dash of the supernatural, a bunch of eccentric and memorable characters, and so many twists that you're still twisting in the final pages.It could be really preposterous, the way that Sam and Miguel arrive at the exact same moment with interlocking stories. However, if you take Miguel at his word that ghosts have guided him through his life to this moment, and accept this as a semi-ghost story, it becomes easier to swallow as well as a more interesting story.I liked the relationships between everyone, and I especially liked that the female lead is a mathematical genius. How often does someone create a female character like that? There is also a generous sprinkling of various parts of history, which is always a plus. I'm definitely going to check out a few more of Hill's novels, including a long-running series about Yorkshire detectives.