This is a haunting historical mystery set in three different time periods. Beginning with Catherine de Medici, Queen of France who cuts a lonely figure as a jealous wife, she begins to dabble in the black arts. Then travelling to present day London where recently divorced architect Johnny is commissioned to redesign an abandoned shoe factory into a designer split level home. Johnny discovers a hidden room in the basement, there he finds a long forgotten Venetian mirror. Spooked by his encounter with the mirror Johnny feels the dark presence that had been locked away in the hidden room spill out into his own life impacting on his burgeoning relationship with Ophelia, both are drawn to the mirror and the secrets it holds. Johnny begins to research the mirror's history and discovers a link to a tragic death which took place in the factory many years before. Is it possible that the mirror is haunted?
This is a wonderful piece of storytelling in the vein of Barbara Erskine, Rachel Hore, Kate Mosse and Helen Moorhouse, with fantastic characters and a thrilling denouement. I enjoyed the way that Melissa drip fed the three story lines throughout the book never revealing too much or too little. I look forward to this author's next book and highly recommend this to fans of the ghostly, the historical and the time-slip.
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