#BookReview #SummerThrills ‘A Hank Of Hair’ by Charlotte Jay

About the book…

Gilbert Hand hasn’t been the same since his wife died. He’s moved to a dull but respectable hotel where silence seems to brood in the hall and stairway. In a secret drawer he discovers a long, thick hank of human hair, and his world narrows down to two people – himself and the murderer.

First published in 1967, with a truly terrifying cover which is why I noticed it at my local charity shop (see my insta for more details, if you dare!) ‘A Hank Of Hair’ is described as a ‘psychopathological horror’ novel and ‘excellent nightmare reading’.

Ok, I am there for this!
Reminiscent of Ruth Rendell at her finest and deliciously gothic best, the narrative is a first person, told from the perspective of Gilbert Hand, whose wife, Rachel, has recently died in a ship collision.

Her wealth, which she brought into the marriage, is now his, and although he states he is lost without her and misses her, on the advent of her death he packs their house up and sells it, gives up his job and moves to London to live in a hotel. Laziness brings him to move to a hotel closer to the museums which he loves, a bizarre place presided over by housekeeper Mrs Pride and owner, Major Sinclair.

Here he lives a life of indulging in his love of art, having taken his favourite books and some Japanese prints which Rachel detested with him. He says ‘I prefer beauty always a little soured.When it comes to me as a spoonful of syrup I spit it out.’

From Gilbert’s narrative, we can deduce that he is under the care of a doctor to manage his grief, whether this is a GP or a psychiatrist is unknown, but you get the uneasy feeling from the way he speaks that this is a kind of confession, or maybe a statement to the police after the event of some tragic happening.

He never sees anyone else who lives in the hotel, the corridors are quiet and the guests do not impinge on each other. Until, one day, Gilbert comes back and finds the desk in his room is not quite the same.

A conversation with Mrs Pride reveals that the Major has changed the furniture after a particular nuisance of a boy staying there would use his pocket knife to score the tops of furniture. After Mrs Pride leaves, he investigates the new arrival and finds a hidden artefact, a hank of hair tied with a green ribbon.

Now Gilbert has mentioned up to this point observations which you would take as written from someone interested in art-he makes astute remarks about their physical characteristics which provide context for the role the reader is taking on. But when this hair appears, it becomes to my mind, a deeply sinister obsession on finding who stayed in the room, to whom did the hair belong, and what happened to them.

Eerie and chilling, you peel back the layers of what is going on inside Gilbert’s head as his evocative descriptions of those he engages with linger, maddeningly in your head and all come back to that all too fresh lock of human hair, stowed away, and to what purpose?

Talk about summer chills…brrrr!

About the author…

Charlotte Jay was the pseudonym adopted by Australian mystery writer and novelist, Geraldine Halls. One of the best and most singular authors of the suspense era, she wrote only nine crime books, but their unorthodoxy secured her a high place in Mystery Hall of Fame.

Jay was born as Geraldine Mary Jay in Melville in Adelaide, South Australia on December 17, 1919. She attended Girton School (now Pembroke School) and the University of Adelaide, and worked as a shorthand typist in Australia and England, and as a court stenographer in New Guinea, 1942-1950.

She married Albert Halls, an Oriental specialist, who worked with the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). Albert Halls has dealt in Oriental antiques in England and Australia. Marrying Albert enabled her to travel to many exotic locations in which she later included in her future books. Only her first novel, The Knife is Feminine, is set in Australia. The other books are set in Pakistan, Japan, Thailand, England, Lebanon, India, Papua New Guinea and the Trobriand Islands.

After a long career in writing Halls died on the 27 October 1996, in her home town of Adelaide.

Her book Beat Not the Bones won the then newly created Edgar Allan Poe Award of the Mystery Writers’ Association of America for Best Novel of the Year in 1954.