The Witchfinder's Sister: The captivating Richard & Judy Book Club historical thriller 2018

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Coming from Essex and as a connoisseur of witchcraft and the occult, I was extremely excited to watch this new play. Full of twists and turns and at the end all I could think of what what a lots of lives destroyed one way or another. Beth Underdown’s debut novel, centred on Matthew Hopkins, the infamous “ witchfinder general” of the mid 17th century, positions him as a serial killer: “The number of women my brother Matthew killed, as far as I can reckon it, is one hundred and six. Set in Cornwall with echoes of Daphne Du Maurier's classic novel, Rebecca, the novel centres around events at Polneath House owned by Thomas Tremain, home also to his son and heir Edward.

The Witch Finder’s Sister by Beth Underdown review

The question of whether Alice will be able to save Bridget, a friend of the siblings’ dead mother, forms a significant strand of the book.The original crime becomes diluted, which is regrettable as the victim was the definition of innocence.

The Witchfinder’s Sister, Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch Review: The Witchfinder’s Sister, Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch

This lapses from 1888 and 1918 which spans a whooping number of years that accumulate a lot of dark secrets within family, relationships and is written in the style that I’ve come to love from Beth Underdown. With a husband afflicted with serious health issues, Ivy feels the only way she will find peace and face the future is if she gets to the truth of what happened long ago when as Ivy Cardew, the daughter of a struggling doctor, she was helping him with nursing duties. The Witchfinder’s Sister has plenty of chilling moments, an assured cast, and some well-timed comic relief delivered with aplomb. Alice’s first duty is to slip away and pay respects to her mother-in-law, Bridget, who as an outspoken older woman is directly in Matthew’s sights. The plotline, even though it sounds great, wasn't written particularly clever and the final twist was very obvious.Family secrets are uncovered, wills are read, inquests are held, clandestine meetings take place and identities are revealed – yet this is not really the exciting, suspenseful Gothic novel I had been hoping for. Set almost 400 years in the past, the core themes of this story could apply to any aspect of female life in the 21st century.