Rating: 2/5
Review:
Very disappointing
Cathi Unsworth is a very good writer whose previous work I
have liked very much, but I'm sorry to say that That Old Black Magic was a
severe disappointment.
Set in 1942, the plot is about Nazi spies who use
spiritualist and other occult circles for their nefarious ends. There is an engaging protagonist in Spooner,
a policeman turned undercover agent who sets out to unravel the mystery, but
apart from that I found very little to keep me reading here. The pace is funereally slow, the plot is
convoluted and rather confusing and - although I'm astonished to be saying this
of a Cathy Unsworth novel – it's not all that well written. For one thing, there is masses and masses of
clunky exposition; Unsworth has plainly researched her subject and period very thoroughly,
but the picture she paints is to me rather crude and clichéd. There are some pretty predictable
developments among the seemingly endless stream of just telling us things –
including stuff like every single component of one very minor character's
Sunday roast, for example.
I'm sorry to say that I got so fed up that, after
persevering well beyond the point where I was the remotest bit interested, I
gave up – which was a considerable relief.
I hope Cathi Unsworth returns to form in the future, but this one most
definitely wasn't for me.
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