THE ANGEL GATEWAY
Jane Adams
Macmillan, £16.99
ISBN0 0 333 90169 X

Review by Jean Currie

D.I. Ray Flowers, after being severely burned on face and hands by a petrol bomb thrown at him, goes away to escape media and other attention. He hopes to recuperate, regain the use of his hands, adjust to his disfigured face and the shock and embarrassment aroused in all who see him. He moves to an old country cottage he has inherited from his late aunt, feeling guilty because he has not spent more time with her.

He expects to find peace where no one knows him but he is soon very much involved with his aunt's friends and affairs. The vicar stayed with her when he first came to the village and from her diaries he finds she had another visitor. He is almost sure he doesn't believe in ghosts - he is a down-to-earth policeman - but Kitty, who lived and died in Cromwell's time, becomes as real to him as Sarah, who helps him search for Kitty's background, her fate and the reasons she continues to haunt his cottage after three hundred years.

The story of why Ray was attacked runs side by side with Kitty's story - more than side by side, intermingled, for she is as aware of him as he is of her. She too has facial scars from burns; she too is strong in her beliefs and delights in helping others; and she too has friends who love her and support her when she needs help.

Jane Adams skilfully contrasts the innocent, gentle young woman with the older man, just as sensitive, but more used to dealing with criminals and men in power. At the same time she makes us feel that maybe the villains of centuries past were not as bad as those of today. Their methods might have been extreme but they had good reasons for doing what they did. They acted from strong beliefs, superstitions to us perhaps, but real to them.

The crime story would have made a novel in itself, as would the ghost story, but linking the two, having these strong characters dart in and out of each other's lives despite the centuries that part them, makes an intriguing, absorbing read.