Owen Townend's Reviews > The Little One

While I have not read the books of Lynda La Plante before, I am fairly certain that she is better known for her crime than her horror. Even so this proved a ghost story worth telling.

At first I was put off by La Plante's tendency to use exposition paragraphs to tell rather than show dialogue. Though I appreciate this may have been done to keep within the parameters of a 'Quick Read', I believe dialogue would have been just as efficient with a potentially even smaller word count.

Style aside, I thought the familiar haunted manor house plot was improved by having a selfish but ultimately lonely protagonist. Also the supporting cast of a photographer she insists is a close colleague and his good-natured partner whose hospitality is soon taken advantage of, counterbalance the rather tedious Margaret and the 'little one' who haunts her. I equally enjoyed the ambivalence of the ending which is both somehow dreadful and heartening.

I recommend The Little One to fans of ghost stories and the spookier side of La Plante's writing.