#Review - The Shadow Dancers of Brixton Hill by Nicole Willson

The Shadow Dancers of Brixton Hill    
Nicole Willson
Cemetery Gates Media, 13 June 2023 
Available as: PB 109pp, e  
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9798395159861

I'm grateful to Cemetery Gates Media for sending me a copy of The Shadow Dancers of Brixton Hill to consider for review.

The Shadow Dancers of Brixton Hill is a deliciously creepy horror story set in the 1930s US at a time when small family circuses are struggling in the face of the losses caused by the Depression and of competition from emerging bigger players. To the unease caused by that background of financial pressure, Willson adds a less definable sense of menace, of  otherness, of possibility, inherent in the atmosphere of the big tent or the jumble behind the stage. This is focussed on a truly eerie performance in which three young women have learned to control and direct their own shadows.

Under the direction and control of their sinister trainer and impresario Lewis Oswald, Abigail, Camilla and Rose seem set to storm the cirrus world. Yet it seems as though all isn't well. Kate Montgomery, who has travelled down to Brixton Hill to engage them for her father's circus, has concerns - concerns which seem to be borne out as she learns more about the conditions under which the three women were "acquired" by Oswald and trained, and under which they live. The story gives us a grim account of a world in which the careless rich get whatever they want, facilitated by those desperate to curry favour, while the poor, the outsiders, survive as they must. Even Oswald has seen better days and in his haste to stave off his creditors he really doesn't seem to have his performers' best interest at heart.

I won't say any more about the turn things take, because the ending of this story absolutely should come as a surprise. What I will say is that Willson nails it perfectly, leaving the reader - well, me at least - with complex emotions about where things are going.

I strongly recommend this book, which comes with a bonus story, Willson's Angels with Broken Wings, a delicious account of a family at war with itself...

For more information about The Shadow Dancers of Brixton Hill, see the publisher's website here. You can order the book from Amazon US here or Amazon UK here.