Mariah Mundi: The Midas Box
By G.P. Taylor
Published by Faber and Faber
ISBN 0571238351 / 978 0571238 354
Tagline: superior and gripping thriller, rich in tension and spooky plot twists.
What's it about?
Teenager Mariah Mundi has just left the orphange where he's been brought up and is travelling to a seaside town in Northern England to begin work at the Prince Regent Hotel. We are in Victorian England and orphans like Mariah are packed off to emplyment when charity organisations have done their job. The Prince Regent is a massive, rambling edifice with hidden rooms and secret passages burrowing deep into the cliff on which it stands. It is a forbidding place with more shadows than a graveyard at midnight. Mariah soon learns that the boy who worked here before him vanished under mysterious circumstances. Something very weird is going on at the Prince Regent. No-one here is to be trusted, least of all the hotel itself. Before long, Mariah is lured into the slimy caverns under the hotel where he discovers the hotel's deadly secret.
Is it any good?
This is a terrific, fast paced and gripping read. If you enjoy novels cloaked in a thick, spooky atmosphere, "M. M: The Midas Box" will not disappoint. Much more subtle and believeable than some of Taylor's earlier books, this first title in a promised series of seven is unputdownable. It is a dark masterpiece that draws you into its damp clutches from page one. Not since Stephen King's "The Shining", has a menacing building played such an important part and come so threateningly alive in a work of fiction. Mariah Mundi is the most intriguing new character to arrive on the youth fiction scene since Harry Potter. He should better known than he is. Arrange a meeting with him at the Prince Regent Hotel and you will quickly discover his spooky pulling power.
