Disease and devastation
NICK RENNISON is enthralled by a gripping story of a medieval village turned upside down by plague
The Last Hours by Minette Walters Allen & Unwin, 568 pages, £20
Minette Walters is well known as a crime writer. Her contemporary thrillers, such as The Sculptress and TheDark Room, have sold millions of copies and won great critical acclaim. Walters’ new book – her first full-length novel in a decade – represents a major change in direction.
The Last Hours is a sprawling narrative about the arrival of the Black Death in England and its devastating impact on one area of Dorsetshire. The demesne of Develish, in the middle of the county, is the property of Sir Richard, a blustering, brutish and impoverished landowner, who in the summer of 1348 is desperate to marry off his teenage daughter Eleanor to the son of a wealthier neighbour. Sir Richard and his men-atarms ride off to seal the marital deal, unaware that an unexplained and virulent plague is sweeping across the land – and heading their way.
Lady Anne, Sir Richard’s resourceful wife, decides to quarantine the little community of serfs and their families for whom she is responsible. The village is abandoned, its people taking refuge in the moated manor where, cut off from the pestilence outside, they hope to survive.
As the social order of Develish is turned upside down, only Eleanor, arrogant and poisonously self-centred, refuses to accept the new status quo. When the need for supplies, and an unexplained death within the manor, drive some of the inhabitants to cross the moat and venture beyond Develish, the fragile haven Lady Anne has created is threatened by both the perils of the outside world and by internal dissensions.
Minette Walters may have changed the genre in which she chooses to write, but she has not lost the greatest gift she possesses as a writer – the ability to create characters who arouse readers’ interest, and to fashion a plot that holds the attention. The Last Hours is a gripping and original novel.