Narrated by Tim Gilbert
Tinsel Fish, the second book in Harper Fox’s Tyack and Frayne series, takes place shortly after the events of book one (Once Upon a Haunted Moor), and TV psychic Lee Tyack and Cornish bobby Gideon Frayne are a few weeks into the relationship they began in that book.
As Tinsel Fish opens, Gideon has taken some time off work and has gone to Falmouth to surprise Lee with a visit. He’s fairly sure of his welcome, but there’s a little niggle of apprehension at the back of his mind that wonders if perhaps he’s overstepped the line, considering he and Lee have never really spoken about taking things further than their current pattern of comfortable togetherness and spectacular sex. He’s on his way to Lee’s flat when he’s accosted by a homeless man; Gideon buys him something to eat while listening to his ramblings about how so many of the other homeless he’s known have just disappeared into thin air. Sadly, it’s the sort of story with which Gideon is only too familiar; the almost unremarked disappearances of the homeless, the nameless and the forgotten who end up as mere statistics in government reports.
Outside Lee’s door, Gideon is surprised to hear raised voices coming from inside – he thought Lee lived alone. After a thoroughly enthusiastic greeting, Lee explains he’d had the TV on with the volume up and asks Gideon if he will come to the show he’s doing that night in town. It’s not Gideon’s ‘thing’, Lee knows, but all the same, he’d like him to be there. Of course, Gideon agrees, and finds himself impressed by Lee’s stage presence and aura of quiet confidence. All is going swimmingly until Lee suddenly collapses as he’s talking to a woman about her missing daughter – and the show comes to an abrupt halt.
After Gideon has taken Lee home and asks if he can remember what happened, all Lee can recall is getting a vivid signal from somewhere, the words “Tinsel” and then “Fish” – after which he felt like someone had knocked him down. Now, however, it’s little more than a vague impression, and he doesn’t know what to make of it. Later, at a restaurant, they are finishing their meal when a woman who is clearly in some distress heads for their table. She lives in an old cottage a few miles out of town – and believes it houses something evil. Whatever the presence there is, it has started to affect her in serious ways, and she doesn’t know where – other than Lee – to turn for help.
Lee – whom Gideon has already realised is completely incapable of turning down such a request – agrees to meet Rachel Jones at her home and he asks his colleagues from the TV show he works on to come as well. He can immediately sense the malice Rachel is talking about, but something goes badly wrong, and afterwards Lee is somehow … different. His changed behaviour worries Gideon, who takes Lee home to Bodmin in hopes that a change of scenery might help – but Lee is still ‘off’ and Gideon doesn’t know how to help him.
The connection between Lee and Gideon has always been strong, but here we see just how much they care for each other and how far they’ve come as a couple in such a short time. Gideon has begun to recognise that Lee’s gifts don’t come without a price, and now fears he may have lost the man he fell in love with – yet he doesn’t accuse or reject him, just cares for and tries to protect him the best way he can. While there’s another, non-supernatural, mystery going on in the story, it’s this idea of having someone you care for stolen away by something you can’t see or fight that gave me chills; how is solid, loving, pragmatic Gideon going to get ‘his’ Lee back?
As it turns out, with a bit of help from an unexpected quarter – but I’m not saying more than that; you’ll have to listen to find out!
As with Once Upon a Haunted Moor, the mystery is self-contained and wrapped up by the end, but it seems Harper Fox is clearly writing a serial and gradually unfolding a longer, more complex story. There are still questions to be answered; what exactly is the spiritual danger Lee is facing? Who – or what – keeps trying to get into the house? How is Gideon able to hear Lee’s psychic arguments? And while we get to meet some of Gideon’s family here, Lee is still a bit of a mystery and I am eagerly awaiting whatever revelations are to come about his past and his psychic gifts.
In both the books I’ve listened to so far, I’ve enjoyed the way the author so skilfully weaves together her different plot threads, the way in which the supernatural and the mundane intersect and impinge on one another. Her descriptions of wintry, out-of-season Cornwall paint vivid pictures in the mind’s eye:
Five days before Christmas, the ancient seaside town was lit up with every bulb and bauble the council could afford. Strings of lights picked out the line of the harbour and crisscrossed the narrow cobbled main street that followed the waterfront.
And the whole tale is gorgeously atmospheric, permeated by an undercurrent of malevolence in which Gideon and Lee’s love for one another stands out like a beacon.
Tim Gilbert is an excellent choice of narrator for this series and delivers another expert and thoroughly enjoyable performance. His portrayals of Lee and Gideon are utterly perfect, reflecting their physicality as well as their personalities, and, as I said in my review of Once Upon a Haunted Moor, his regional accents are consistently applied and have subtle variations depending on where the characters are from and how old they are. His female voices are good, too – no stratospheric alterations in pitch; a slight softening of timbre does the job nicely. The secondary characters are all well realised, too, especially Gideon’s older brother Ezekiel, whose booming bass/baritone works perfectly for the large, imposing Methodist minister who, while he may not approve of his brother’s lifestyle, nonetheless cares about him and has a pivotal role to play in the story.
All in all, Tinsel Fish is compelling, spooky and romantic – and, at around three and a half hours, far too short! But it’s a fabulously enjoyable little morsel, and with seven of the eight stories now available in audio, I can binge or eke them out as the mood takes me.
Caz
Buy Tinsel Fish by Harper Fox on Amazon
