This was a little too creepy, a little too horror, and a little too much for me. And I tend to read and enjoy things with quite an odd bent to them. But it was not quite my speed and I DNFed it.

-- this read was quite a while back, as I received the arc during 2020 and was unable to review during 2020 due to the many, many issues of that year. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for arc!

Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

I've just realised that although I posted a review on my blog, I didn't post a review on here.

Creeping Jenny is the third in a series of John Nyquist novels following on from A Man of Shadows and Body Library.. I haven't read either of those previous two novels and came about this one through synchronicity on Twitter. I saw people taking about how good Jeff Noon books are and saw Creeping Jenny was available as a wish on Netgalley. Angry Robot Books very kindly granted the wish but unfortunately the book expired the next day but Angry Robot still very kindly provided an ARC copy for review.

That said, I didn't find that an impedance reading Creeping Jenny. It's a captivating, enthralling mystery with magical, horror and occult themes. At times the edges of reality are blurred between waking, dreaming and altered states of consciousness; The plot development is really well paced with plot twists throughout

I've written this review as spoiler free as possible. John Nyquist is a down on his luck private eye who is investigating the disappearance of his father. The story opens with him on a bus, heading to the village of Hoxley-on-the-Hale. After alighting the bus, he walks through a field finding woodland with writing on cards tied to the branches of trees.

That's the first indication that Hoxley isn't quite what it seems. The village appears fairly normal with houses, a village green, shop, a pub and church but his first interaction with the villagers reveals a strange and sinister side.

The village is large enough that there is some anonymity but there is also a wariness of strangers and a feeling that quite a few of them probably know everyone's business..

This presents challenges in itself but the task is made much harder by Saint's Days. This is a clever twist on how we know Saint's Days, in Hoxley they are part of everyday life, there are only five days a year that aren't Saint's Days. These Saints are randomly chosen throughout the year and govern the villager's behaviour in a number of different and at times very strange ways. It's almost like a cult, the villagers struggle to know what to do on those five non-Saint days..

The story reveals a hidden web of dark secrets lurking beneath the surface of this seemingly normal village. And not very far below the surface. There's the mysterious and very creepy Tolly Man who makes an appearance each year but is so deeply woven into the psyche of the villagers he's an ever present.

And then there's Creeping Jenny, immortalised in particularly freakish nursery rhymes and songs and never too far away..

The connections are gradually revealed as the plot unfolds through twists and turns and character development and a number of impediments presented by various Saints..

It's hugely enjoyable and a gripping read. The plot twists kept me guessing and there are several unexpected twists and turns as the story reaches its climax.

A strange and interesting book, with creepy setting and characters. I didn't realise it was part of a series, so I stopped about a few chapters in so I can go back and read the other ones, and keep up with the story! I've never read anything by Jeff Noon but will look into his other books, because reading the other reviews, he seems to be popular and I am interested by his other works after reading this book.

It's the Journey, Not the Destination

The first two Nyquist books were gripping, and ended with strong, satisfying conclusions. This third Nyquist book is a fine, creepy, disorienting trip, but to me the resolution seemed weak and inconclusive. I enjoyed it very much, but in that Algernon Blackwood way that you are drawn deeper and deeper into the weird horror, and then pull yourself together just enough to get out of town and try to forget the madness you left behind.

That said, almost every scene, every page, has a notable line, bit, or throwaway observation that will grab you, unnerve you, or delight you. Everything is a bit unhinged, including, increasingly, Nyquist himself, and that is the main part of the fun and fascination. I don't think it ends up being much of a mystery, at least in the sense that Nyquist is trying to solve the matter of his absent father's disappearance. The mystery is mostly an excuse, stretched out on a "Wicker Man" frame, to explore how weird an isolated village can be. (BTW, the answer to that is, "very weird, indeed".)

So, this is top drawer Jeff Noon, and a fine addition to his strange, weird, and startlingly addictive Nyquist series. A wonderful trip.

(Please note that I received a free ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

I was introduced to the work of Jeff Noon through his previous “Nyquist Mystery,” Man of Shadows, which takes place in Dayzone, a city under perpetual illumination. It goes without saying that without an imposed circadian rhythm and with the ability to sleep and wake on an individual schedule, the culture and psychology warp in bizarre and unexpected ways. I found the effect within the novel downright hallucinatory.

Creeping Jenny is no less weird, although it’s set in a small English village. John Nyquist has received a set of photographs, including one of his father, believed to be deceased. The story begins with his arrival in the village of Hoxley, in search of the truth – could his father be still alive, after all these years? Although the village is superficially quaint and quiet, it is no less weird than the city of Dayzone. For 300 days a year, the saint of that day rules over Hoxley, and a stranger set of saints I could not imagine. One day everyone stays indoors until dusk, another day everyone wears a mask and insists they are Edward or Alice, and on yet another, nothing ever gets completed – sentences, work, trying to get from one place to another. One villager names trees (and people), hanging tags on them, and gives Nyquist a mysterious name, Written in Blood. Two apparent suicides send Nyquist on the hunt for an explanation – were they in truth murders?

Noon has an almost supernatural ability to start off with an apparently mundane, real life situation and warp it in such unexpected directions that by the time you realize you are not in Kansas anymore, you’re not even on the same planet.

I was pleased to receive a copy of this from the publishers via netgalley. Having read the previous books I find the author continues to build on the atmosphere incorporated in his previous writing. The main character Is a dystopian Marlowe character. Nyquist is a down at heels individual still trying to find answers to questions unanswered way back to his childhood. A collection of old photographs throw up questions that he can’t ignore.
His life encompasses a nightmare world brilliantly capturing the dark yet complex facets of his environment. Nyquist is now out of the city seeking answers in the village of Hoxley-on the-vale and finds little help from the villagers. As usual he is on his own hitting a brick wall. Who can he trust when it’s difficult to distinguish friend from foe. A blend of dark folklore, strange village customs. Enter the Tolly Man and the Creeping Jenny of the title.
Is it possible that someone is trying to impede his investigation when a dead body appears in the village. Could Nyquist be in line for sacrifice or will he find answers to the puzzle concerning his father.
The author has his own special style of writing and you really need to pay attention. Excellent world building and character portrayal. Not giving anything away here and would recommend you read A Man of Shadows and The Body Library first to develop a feel for the character. A chance to read something a little different. Would recommend the author is a very underrated writer

Generally I'm a fan of capital-W Weird Fiction™, and Noon certainly sucked me into the hyper-surreal world of CREEPING JENNY within the first few pages. I struggled to complete the book, but certain images stuck with me so powerfully that I purchased some *actual* Creeping Jenny from a plant nursery when setting up this year's garden. I ... may have killed it? A few leaves are still alive, and I'm working hard to give it love. It seems appropriately symbolic, I suppose: something deeply compelling but also a bit of a struggle to keep up with.

Jeff Noon’s Vurt still ranks in my top 10 so he set the bar high for himself many years ago.
This is the third instalment of the Nyquist Mysteries and also my favourite of the three. It certainly helps to have read the previous two to get the backstory and the satisfaction (or not) of the conclusion, but this could still be enjoyed on its own.
It’s a fantasy-ish, horror-ish mystery, but it’s also an accomplished piece of writing. Excellent stuff.

Kafka in Wonderland. That's what I kept imagining as I read through this fantastic book.

Detective John Nyquist is getting clues about his father who disappeared over 20 years ago. He goes to visit the quaint but odd little village of Hoxley-on-Hale. Here the villagers honor 360 different saints, 360 days a year. For five days the villagers arefree to celebrate how they choose. These celebrations are extreme and the villagers follow them, er, religiously. On one day they may all wear masks, on another day they don't speak, and still another they complete only half of EVERYthing (speech, actions, etc), and another still where everyone is addressed as either Alice or Edward. For a visitor looking for information, as Nyquist is, this is all very confusing and confounding. One might think that on one of those five 'free' days, it might be easier to commune with the villagers, but the citizens generally feel lost and uncertain on those days.

Nyquist has a very challenging time just trying to uncover who has been sending him messages about his father and what might have happened to his father and it only gets more complicated as there are some unusual murders occurring and he is clearly the most capable of detectives to look into this.

Really, all I can say to this is: Wow.

Jeff Noon is so incredibly creative. He writes some of the most amazing speculative fiction I have ever read. The story here is truly awesome, but it's the journey, it's Jeff Noon's writing that transforms this from a simple good book to an experience.

It's not just the wildly unusual/creative world surrounding Nyquist that is so wonderful here, it's following Nyquist, seeing this world through his eyes, and trying to make some sense of what is happening. This series really is like Alice wandering through Wonderland. We have the one person with whom we identify - someone more-or-less like us, thrown into extremely unsettling situations and trying to navigate through it, with a goal in mind.

Looking for a good book? <em>Creeping Jenny</em> by Jeff Noon is the third book in the John Nyquist series and is astoundingly good. If you are extremely adverse to feeling disoriented, you might want to avoid this book. But if you enjoy wading through a Wonderland, or the varied realities in a Philip K. Dick novel, then settle yourself in and open this book.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Creeping Jenny by Jeff Noon
Genre: Mystery & Thriller and Sci-fi & Fantasy
Publisher: Angry Robots
Publish Date: 23 March 2020

Star Rating: 5/5

Jeff Noon is an all-time favorite author of mine and he's back! I completely lost my self in this book...it was amazing, weird, creepy, and surreal. I wish my imagination was as detailed and crazy as Jeff Noon's. What a world that would be to live in.

We return with the character of Private Eye John Nyquist. Its the winter of 1959 and he's in the village of Hoxley-on-the-Hale on a case for himself. He's been sent a set of mysterious photographs and one is of his father. A recent photograph of his father, which is odd since he hasn't seen him since early childhood... and is missing.

By entering this village Nyquist is entering into its world which is dominated by saints (chosen at random each day) who dictate the behavior of the villagers for that day. Nyquist has to jump through the saint's hoops while hoping to find his father. But the truth lies deep, he doesn't know friend from foe and the Tolly Man's coming.

The saints are an amazing concept. We go through days that villagers can't leave their houses, to every villager being Alice or Edward and another that makes you do everything by half. My description of them is bad but reading the book you'll see just how ingenious they are. As the book went on I kept thinking Noon had reached his creative zenith of the saints but each day brought another spectacular creation and some were just outright dark.

Apart from the setting and atmosphere the saints create we also have the bogeyman folk-tale or reality of the Tolly Man...and he's coming and the legend of the Creeping Jenny that's addicted to Nyquist, finding him in the oddest of places, even his tea.

The imagery is amazing, the creepiness is outstanding and the storytelling is on point. You need to read this story!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an E-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

A detective like I've never read before arrives in a village with a packet of photos .. looking, we discover , for his dad .. the villagers are strangely reticent and become more so . The characters and story get more delightfully perverse but we are wholly involved with Nyquist's search in this really well written, unique volume .. I loved it, and when I discover there are another two , I was totally pleased .. I'm getting them. Really an eye opener in the ways of devious engrossing fiction. Things don't go right but make perfect sense!

This was the first book I read in this series but I liked it so much that I bought all the previous instalments.
It's weird, atmospheric, enthralling and I couldn't put it down.
It was not love at first read but the more I read the more I was fascinated by the characters and the world building.
I think that Mr Noon can surely write a story that will keep you hooked till the last page.
An excellent read, highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

The Nyquist mysteries are a favourite of mine, the writing is superb and the quirky, creepy world that Jeff Noon has built here and where our protagonist resides is one of the most imaginative out there.

Once more with Creeping Jenny the surreal nature of the narrative immediately captured my brain - Nyquist is on the hunt for his Father in a village populated by saints. The story unfolds in dream like fashion and is intensely involving throughout. 

I always have weird dreams after reading a Noon novel..this was no exception and is the reason I love them. Affecting and intelligent.

Whole series comes highly recommended from me.

I have always wondered what had happened to Jeff Noon. Back in the ’90s, this UK writer was one of my favourites, turning out one of the best books ever written about virtual reality, Vurt, and a crackling sequel to Alice in Wonderland called Automated Alice. Then, he seemingly disappeared. His books started getting removed from the shelves of the local library. It was as though he had vanished into thin air. Well, it turns out that Noon is back, and this time he’s writing sci-fi mysteries as part of a series that centres around private eye protagonist John Nyquist. His third book in the series is the recently published Creeping Jenny. The great thing about this book is that you can dive right in — no need to read the preceding two novels. It’s a genuinely thrilling book that answers the question, “How would The Wicker Man have turned out if it had been written by Franz Kafka?”

Set in the winter of 1959 in an alternate reality of the UK, Creeping Jenny takes place in a small town on the moors called Hoxley-on-the-Hale. John Nyquist has been pulled to this burg thanks to a package of mysterious pictures that have been mailed to him, suggesting that his long-lost father is now residing in the village. The thing is, once he arrives, he discovered that a Saint rules each day in the village, giving the day a strange sort of nightmarish power — one Saint’s Day prevents people from speaking, while another forces villagers to spend the entire day in bed. It’s against this strange backdrop of religious ritual — one that includes a town resident dressing up as resident boogeyman the Tolly Man, a kind of collection of twigs and branches strung together into human form — that Nyquist must solve the mystery of what’s happened to his dad.

Just like the works of Kafka, Creeping Jenny is full of absurdities. It’s a weird book that gets weirder and weirder as it progresses, though without sacrificing its readability. However, Noon does paint himself into a corner with all the weirdness, and the final reveal — when it comes — is lacklustre and a disappointment. The novel ends with a whimper instead of a bang. At its best, the book is most successful in portraying small-town life as being bizarre, which — as someone who grew up in a small town can appreciate — is its most satisfying aspect. There’s a kind of running commentary about small towns being tough to escape from, which, again, is something that resonated with me based on my upbringing.

However, Creeping Jenny — so named after a child’s nursery rhyme of unknown origin — is also a skilled retelling of classic British horror fiction. There’s plenty in this novel that recalls The Wicker Man, right down to the stranger looking for a missing person angle. This is just filtered through an absurdist lens, with the religious holidays serving as a backdrop to the comings and goings of the villagers of Hoxley. If you took away this element of the book, you wouldn’t have too much to go on — because the bulk of the book is simply Nyquist (in very entertaining fashion) trying to navigate the customs of each Saint’s Day to varying degrees of success. For instance, one day sees the villagers impossibly trying to finish their own sentences, which, as a detective trying to get down to serious business, hinders the job that needs to be done.

There’s a colourful cast of characters in Creeping Jenny — a couple of which get bumped off in strange fashion, which, again, threatens to take over the main mystery of the book in the potential father-son reunification. How did these characters die? Was it murder or did they die by their own hand? And what do they have to do with the visiting Nyquist? As you can tell, Creeping Jenny is stuffed to the gills with stories within stories, creating a sort of narrative maze, padding out the page count of this novel to a length that would take it beyond the simple “looking for an absent father” mystery angle. That’s one of the joys of the book — this is a tome that you can quite easily get lost in, but it also means that the book lacks a bit of focus. You really don’t know where Creeping Jenny is going to take you next, which will either be a blessing to readers who like to be surprised, or a curse to those who wish that Noon would get to the point and hurry up and solve his mystery.

All in all, I enjoyed Creeping Jenny despite being torn in two about it. Noon is a rich writer, and his absurdist ideas are a joy to discover. However, as a pure mystery story, there isn’t much here to go on simply because the clues don’t really point to anything that’s logical or allow the reader to make deductions as to how the story will resolve itself. Creeping Jenny is fun, and I appreciate the fact that you don’t need to read the other books in the series to make sense of it, but it does go on far too long and the ending is quite a bit of a let-down. Still, I’m glad to have rediscovered Jeff Noon and determine that he’s still at it, writing demented and original fiction that nobody else can really hold a candle to. Noon is a special writer, one deserving of the highest accolades, and even if his stories sometimes miss the mark, he is clearly gifted with ideas — which the whole sci-fi universe that Noon’s protagonists inhabit render to good use. Noon at his ’90s peak ran hot and cold with me — there was the odd forgettable novel in his run of daring and inventive fiction, and Creeping Jenny bears the hallmarks of this. Still, it’s a good read for the curious and those who want to know what Jeff Noon is up to and that he didn’t disappear at all. There you have it in a nutshell. Mystery solved.

This is the third of Jeff Noon’s Nyquist Mystery series, but don’t worry if you haven’t read either of the other two; I had only read the second book (The Body Library) prior to reading this one, and can confirm that you don’t need to have read either of the other two before getting stuck into this one. Also, in true Jeff Noon fashion, it probably wouldn’t help you grasp what’s going on any better anyway. The always experimental, award winning author has made his home in metanarratives and kicked so many holes through the fourth wall that the roof is surely coming down around his ears by now. Honestly, by the end of his Arthur C. Clarke Award winning debut Vurt, I wasn’t sure if I was even real any more. I actually found Creeping Jenny one of his easier to follow novels, in that by the end I felt like I’d understood pretty much everything that had happened and didn’t feel compelled to google “Creeping Jenny ending explained.”

A creepy and pervasive sense of wrongness is established nice and early. There’s a very gothic tone throughout, although I would hesitate before putting the novel wholly in this (or indeed, any) genre. Jeff Noon’s work nicely fulfils the “WTF” part of publisher Angry Robot’s “SF, F and WTF?!” mandate. Having been summoned to the village by a set of creepy photographs that depict a mysterious tower that the residents claim to know nothing about, Nyquist’s welcome to Hoxley-on-the-Hale is not exactly warm. His first encounter is with the bizarre Sylvia Keepsake, who appears to live in the woods giving names to things - in particular, trees. She does this by writing the name she’s given them on a card, then hanging it on a particular branch.

But the creepiness and wrongness only increase as Nyquist continues his investigations. The unique central mechanic of the story is the saints worshipped in Hoxley-on-the-Hale - 360 in total, one for almost every day of the year. Not only is the worship of the saints interesting and often unsettling, it gives the novel a wonderfully paced narrative and sense of structure. The specific rules of worship placed upon the villagers begin somewhat quirkily, then become stranger and more disturbing as the story progresses. This lends the novel a real page turning quality, as I found I was keen to see exactly what rules would accompany whichever saint came next. Each day’s rituals are distinct from the one before, and all are highly imaginative. I also enjoyed the descriptions of the creepy little homemade miniatures of the saints displayed in Nyquist’s room and trying to guess what effect that particular saint would have on the day from the description. Unsurprisingly, I guessed wrong pretty much every time! Some of the observances are very off the wall, but to say more would be spoiling things. Their effect on each day tends to frustrate Nyquist’s investigations, almost as if different narrative “filters” have been applied to a traditional mystery story. On top of this, Nyquist often wakes up in his room with little or no indication of how he got there, which adds to the general sense of disorientation - he is out of his comfort zone, and we as readers are pushed out of ours along with him. This sense of disorientation also comes out in Nyquist’s conversations with the inhabitants of the village. Not only are they frequently difficult to communicate with owing to the restrictions or rules placed upon them by that day’s saint, they also often speak at right angles to Nyquist, seeming to answer a different question to that which he’s asked. The rural setting and the investigations of the main character evoke the likes of The Wicker Man, while the experimental nature of the writing and the folkloric themes recall Max Porter’s Lanny. Surely a mouth-watering prospect.

Creeping Jenny is an engrossing read, a psychological thriller with a wonderfully distinct twist and a more than worthy addition to Jeff Noon’s already impressive body of work. It’s a playful fantasy, fizzing with a dark magic, that will draw you in with its mysteries and unsettle you with its offbeat setting. Having very much enjoyed it, I will now be purchasing the first book, A Man of Shadows, to find out exactly how Noon put Nyquist through the wringer in that one.

Once again, I have started a series at the wrong end. Creeping Jenny is Jeff Noon’s third novel featuring detective John Nyquist. Fortunately, this novel stands on its own as it takes Nyquist into a strange version of rural England, to a town were everyone’s behavior is ruled by a series of saints. The saints are selected at random and there is no abstention for visitors. So, not only does Nyquist have to solve his own mystery, but also the ever-changing codes of conduct in Hoxley-on-the-Hale. Once I got my reading feet under me, I was completely hooked.

John Nyquist does not have an auspicious arrival in Hoxley. I doubt anyone does. Not wanting to waste any time, Nyquist visits one of the places shown in a series of mysterious photographs that have been sent to him. All he knows about the photos is that they are of various places in Hoxley and that they have something to do with his long-missing father. But when Nyquist knocks on the door of the cottage in the photo, he is quickly whisked inside. No one is supposed to be out until midnight, according to the day’s saint. A bizarrely active cup of tea, a silent wife, and a lot of denials later, and we’re off to the races.

Nyquist is a dogged detective. Even though he is variously told to not speak unless touching a particular tree, sleeping through a day, and wearing a mask to pretend to be a saint—all on top of the fact that no one seems to want to talk to this outsider about his father—Nyquist persists. And, before he knows it, Nyquist’s mystery turns into something much more sinister and more supernatural than he could have imagined when he just thought he was on the trail of a father who disappeared twenty years previously.

Mystery novels have a tendency to become rote after a while. If you read too many in a row, it started to get easy to see the twists coming and figure out who-done-it well before the detective does. For readers who love puzzles to solve in their fiction, but who are tired of the usual fare, I would definitely recommend Creeping Jenny. This odd, imaginative, engrossing book is just the thing to take you on a mind-bending adventure.

An entertaining pastiche of noir detective novels and M. R. James's occult stories set in small English-like towns. A bit uneven in the writing and approach, but overall a fun read, especially for fans of M. R. James, James Hynes, Angela Carter, and movies like MIdsommar.

You know that feeling where you’re deep in dreams. Perhaps, in your mind’s eye, you’re running through a forest chased by a cat with a frog’s head. Your feet are moving, one in front of the other, but no matter how quickly you wheel your legs it feels like you’re moving through partially melted marshmallow and you can hear the frog wheezing behind you and smell the fusty stink of wet fur and—WAKE UP WAKE UP.

And it’s ok, you wrench your eyes open and look at the clock and you must only have been asleep for a matter of an hour or so. But there’s two blinking points of light in the corner of the room, and as your eyes adjust to the darkness a shadow pools around the lights, the shape solidifies and the head of a frog with a cat’s body stares out at you. A dripping tongue lashes out and the creature starts lisping, forming crude words with its slit of a mouth, and it says—WAKE UP GODDAMN YOU, WAKE UP NOW.

*And breathe*

Imagine this on constant repeat. Every day you wake up and the rules have changed, but you don’t know what they are and if you don’t find out then you might just lose yourself, or lose your soul, or at least lose some small change and a cereal box toy you didn’t realise you had in your pockets.

And this is the feeling that Noon manages to create in Creeping Jenny. He paints images so vividly it’s as if you’re walking through a picture book, the colour slipping off the pages and coating your brain. Each day feels like a tale you’d tell around a campfire, huddled over the flames, avoiding the branches and vines that seem to be leaning closer because *whispers* Creeping Jenny might be coming for you.

Noon creates yet another surreal and bizarre setting for Ncquist to navigate, with characters twisting and turning and plotting, gifting clues with one hand and hiding them with the other. In Hoxley, every new Saint brings its own rules and quirks, leaving Ncquist in a changing landscape. A landscape where he needs to hold onto enough of what’s real to unpick the mystery of his father’s disappearance. Noon’s writing draws you in, and you feel yourself walking with Nyquist, struggling against the different laws of the days, fighting against the limitations, surrendering to the customs and rituals because that might just be the only way to survive.

And this is where Noon weaves his magic, creating places so truly bizarre that you have no choice but to surrender to them, to hold on for the ride. Because when you wake up tomorrow you might not know what the rules are. But you never give up.

So dive into Creeping Jenny with an open mind and a taste for adventure, just be careful about drinking the tea. Because as to be expected with any Noon novel, nothing is quite as it seems.

Favourite line: “emotion was a curse on her face, something to be struggled with”

Read if: You want a beautiful, surreal journey into Saint’s tales, folklore and nightmares, woven through with strands of mystery.

Read with: A strong cup of tea around a campfire. Check the tea for tendrils before drinking.

ARC gratefully received from Angry Robot Books

I wasn’t aware this was part of a series until I went to review it (I wish there had been some indication of that in the preliminary pages). The story was still engaging and interesting, but I felt like I was missing some integral details of Nyquist’s character (including what he looked like) and the fact that this story takes place in some sort of alternate reality version of 1960s England. If this story was intended to stand completely on its own, a little more exposition into Nyquist’s life in “Dayzone”, wherever that is, would have been helpful.

Yet, the story itself is self-contained enough that I was still very much engaged with the mystery. The setting itself is wonderful – a rural town with shifty residents and an increasingly supernatural series of rituals they partake in every day. The people Nyquist meets are either perfectly quirky or subtly sinister and it’s evident the town functions as a normal one would, despite the strange rituals it undergoes daily.

You do have to suspend your disbelief about these rituals, given how intense some of them are. But it’s possible this sort of supernatural going-on is common in Nyquist’s universe but I wasn’t aware of it, having not read the other two novels. I’m assuming this is the case, as Nyquist doesn’t seem overly perturbed that these rituals exist, which would have probably freaked out people in real life.

Unlike some detective stories, where the PI is motivated by money or some vague sense of duty, I liked that this novel has a personal focus to it, which lent Nyquist’s actions more logic – when he commits b and e’s and other risky manoeuvres it’s because he’s desperate to learn about his father. That being said, Nyquist is a rather flat character: while he fits the typical noir detective archetype, he is boring. He is either stoically plodding towards his goal, tired, or demanding answers from people (who seemed quite willing to comply for the most part). There are hints of sympathy about him and he clearly is a “good man”, but the mystery of the town compelled me far more than caring about him.

The absolute best part of this novel is the atmosphere. Noon manages to include well-known tropes of the genre (the witch in the woods, etc) but they don’t come off as cliché. It doesn’t quite reach horror levels, but the creepy ambience pervades throughout the story in a way that makes it the star of the show.

Overall, while I wish I’d known of the previous two novels before this one, it was an enjoyable, creepy mystery that kept me wondering.