Underhill

By Harper Fox

It’s Halloween, and Lee is wrapping up a TV special at Underhill, a haunted house on Bodmin Moor. There’s only one problem – despite its terrible past, this house doesn’t seem to be haunted at all. Not great for the fans of Spirits of Cornwall, but all Lee wants to do is get home to Gideon and Tamsyn in time for their family party. Gid and Zeke are due to pick him up at any minute, so Lee sends his film crew home to enjoy their own Halloween plans .

The moment he’s alone, everything changes. When Gideon and Zeke arrive, they find the house deserted and dark. Zeke thinks Lee must have left with the film crew, but Gid’s instincts tell him otherwise.

The policeman and the preacher must set aside their differences and pool their gifts to pick up Lee’s trail. Will they be in time to save him from the ghosts and strange forces at work in Underhill House?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harper Fox
• Release date: Oct 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781910224823

Harper Fox

Harper Fox is the author of many critically acclaimed M/M Romance novels, including Stonewall Book Award-nominated Scrap Metal and Brothers Of The Wild North Sea, Publishers Weekly Best Book 2013. Her novels and novellas are powerfully sensual, with a dynamic of strongly developed characters finding love and a forever future – after an appropriate degree of turmoil. She loves to show the romance implicit in everyday life, and she writes a sharp action scene too.

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Underhill

Copyright © October 2017 by Harper Fox

Cover art by Harper Fox

Cover photo licensed through Shutterstock

All rights reserved

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This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Underhill

(Book 8 in The Tyack & Frayne Mystery Series)

Harper Fox

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter One

And so, as the Halloween dark draws in, spare a thought for Gwen and Johnny Nancarrow, who met such strange deaths in this ordinary room. I wish I could’ve found some answers for you tonight—but for now, at least, it looks as though Underhill House will be keeping its secrets.

Right, cut. Perfect. Lovely. Anna gestured to the cameraman, who gave her a thumbs-up. Damn you anyway, Lee.

What? Why?

"Spirits of Cornwall is doing really well, you know. I want all the shows I direct to be that good. So I try to work out what it is about your presentation style that pulls people in—because we don’t always have much material, and we’re so low-budget it’s scary. And there you are, with your hands in the pockets of your jeans, talking to the camera as if you were in your own living room. Wearing your pumpkin jumper. She paused, looked him over critically. You wouldn’t consider swapping that for a plain one and doing another take?"

Not a chance. Ma Frayne knitted this for me, and I swore I’d wear it on the Halloween edition. All her friends in Roselands will drop dead of envy, she said—not literally, I hope.

Don’t change the subject. I’d love to show my other presenters how to do what you do. But... you’re not really doing anything at all, are you?

Lee shrugged. He hitched up onto the window sill behind him. His smile, wry as it was, shed light on the bare little room. I still get paid, though, right?

"Stop it. I really would like to know. You’re... quiet, modest. You’re the only genuine clairvoyant I’ve ever worked with, but you don’t throw your gifts around. And you write your own scripts."

That’s how I get all the best lines.

You’re just being yourself. That’s what’s so frustrating. There’s only one of you, and I can’t reproduce your whammy anywhere else.

I dunno, Anna. Lee rubbed his eyes, an end-of-day weariness surfacing. The whammy’s been in short supply today. Jack got some great background shots, and we covered the history of the place, but...

The ghosts were a no-show? Didn’t you tell me yourself that not all violent deaths come back and haunt?

Yeah. We’d be hip-deep in ectoplasm if they all did. He sighed. No, poor Gwen and Johnny are long gone, God rest ’em. They’re at peace. I wouldn’t call them back if I could.

Anna frowned. "You see, you say those things—at peace, and God rest them—like an ordinary bloke. Like your preacher brother-in-law. And I know it’s not what you mean."

Well—it is, in a way. Look, if I said they’d returned to the quantum magic of creation, by the power of the divinity within us and without us, I’d sound like a right twat, wouldn’t I?

Anna laughed, the sound of it oddly sad. Maybe. I prefer it, though. Is that what you believe?

Not a matter of belief, is it? Not for me.

She hesitated. But Jack was busy with his camera bags, and there was no-one else to listen, alive or dead, in the grim house. There’s something I’ve always meant to ask you, Lee. You remember when we got that amazing footage in the underground chamber at Drift church?

Mm. The stuff they’re still picking apart in the labs to try and prove it was you, me and Gideon arsing around with torches?

"Yeah. It made me cry, for the first

Reviews for Underhill

[miss · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

So boring and it’s not easy to read. I’m used to listening to this series which makes things easier, but even so the series is very repetitive beyond the usual recurring essentials