The Thistlewood Curse: A Book Review

A novel where genres mix to form the perfect literary stew

 The first thing to know about The Thistlewood Curse by Simon Dillon is the book cover is simultaneously disturbing, haunting, brilliantly designed, and foreshadowing the novel’s compelling strangeness and genre-bending quality.

Dillon’s book description is brief: “Lawrence Crane’s powers of astral projection are put to the ultimate test when he and his lifelong friend, Detective Laura Buchan, investigate a mysterious death on Lundy Island.

Sensing a dark power at work, they attempt to identify a human assassin controlled by supernatural evil. But can they escape a terrifying, centuries-old curse?”

That is by design because the novel blends a Gothic horror story with the procedural narrative of a classic whodunit. Elements are mixed like a master chef as Dillon sprinkles Holmesian deductive reasoning and the intellectual smugness (Lawrence Crane) along with the mystery of a family curse and the determination and powers of observation of Police Detective Sergeant Laura Buchan.

It’s the tension between the grounded investigation by Sergeant Buchan and the supernatural metamorphosis of astral projection expert Lawrence Crane that makes the novel so compelling.

Dillon is an excellent writer with a knack for narrative flow, character development, and witty dialogue. Much of the novel takes place on Lundy Island, which Dillon delineates in elegant detail. Dillon takes his time in the novel, describing Crane and Laura’s childhoods and how they met as children.

When they are finally called to Lundy Island and the castle, Dillon has assembled all the pieces for a true whodunit. Along the way, there are deftly handled misdirects, dead-ends, and supernatural blind alleys.

The fun is trying to outwit Crane and Buchan and divine what Dillon has in mind for the climax. It doesn’t disappoint.

You may not be familiar with Simon Dillon, but he is a novelist, freelance film journalist, writer, and podcaster. He’s had three novels traditionally published and several others self-published. He has also had short stories published.

Simon Dillon currently lives in the port city of Plymouth in Devon in Southwest England. He is married with two children, and he freely admits that “I am presently brainwashing them with the same books that I loved growing up.”

I first discovered Simon Dillon on Medium with film reviews and film analysis. Dillon has a film review and analysis publication on Medium called Simon Dillon Cinema, which is one of the best film review sites being published. When a new film comes out, Simon Dillon is my resource. He’s not failed me yet. Dillon is also a film history expert and can write about classic Hollywood films with the incisiveness of a historian and the enthusiasm of a true film buff.

Dillon also explains, “I have experience as a freelance film journalist writing for publications including The Guardian and Medium publications including The Writing Cooperative, Illumination, Frame Rated, and Cinemania. I also write film reviews on my blog”

Simon Dillon has written and published books in several genres. He is simultaneously a children’s adventure author, the author of the George Hughes sci-fi trilogy, a horror / thriller novelist, and a literary fiction author.

Dillon’s latest novel Ravenseed “blends adventure and romance with Arthurian mysticism, most of the novel is set during the Dark Ages, but a parallel plot in the present mirrors that of the past, and eventually the two narratives converge.”

Simon Dillon is also serializing a new novel, Bloodmire, which concerns a Dark Ages knight undertaking a quest to rescue the young woman to whom he is betrothed. “She has been captured by a mysterious Beast and taken into a dangerous, uncharted forest. On his quest, the knight encounters bandits, witches, and strange supernatural beings, journeying ever deeper into the forest and ever deeper into himself. But this is no straightforward tale of a damsel in distress. Nor is the knight perhaps as noble as you might initially believe.”

Check out The Thistlewood Curse. It’s an intricately plotted novel with elements of the paranormal, a police procedural, and a whodunit. Thankfully for the reader, Simon Dillon handles all three genres with the skill of a surgeon and the patience of a saint.