Twists and tangles

A bunch of snooty, hormonally overwrought rich teens from a private boarding school ignore the rules and party deep in dangerous haunted woods on Halloween night — what are the chances they don’t all come out alive?

Alas.

A perfect nice girl loved by all, say some, a manipulative mean girl who enjoyed others’ humiliation, say others, but the bottom line: Sarah is dead, not yet an adult, laid out ritualistically at the foot of the crumbling tower from which she was pushed.

A disaster for the school’s cherished reputation, of course, says the authoritarian head of school with the weird husband, though the handful of down-to-earth people in Hannah Richell’s extraordinary One Dark Night reckons it’s a much greater disaster for poor Sarah, poor late Sarah.

The forest is supposedly haunted by the ghost of Sally of the Woods, who found out to her dismay long ago that infidelity was exclusively the province of the husband.

Still, spooky legends and all, it’s exceedingly dangerous: dark woods with uncertain trails and long plummets, a ruined folly boarded up decades ago but breeched by young ne’er-do-wells, spiral staircases with no railing and open at the top, old mines and tunnels theoretically closed off permanently.

And creeps creeping in the creepy woods.

Richell’s most recent murder mystery, 2024’s The Search Party, was one of that year’s best — One Dark Night is even better and you’ll learn no more of the plot. No, don’t whine, it’s not becoming.

This is all happening somewhere near Bath.

Our central protagonist is Rachel, who has a job at the school with a title a mile long that basically translates to non-academics as guidance counsellor.

Her ex is Ben, a detective sergeant who’s one of the senior officers investigating the murder. He’s now partnered romantically with a much younger woman who’s just announced she’s pregnant.

Rachel and Ben, all feelings between them gone, all ancient history. Hmmm.

Their daughter Ellie attends the school and bounces back and forth between their homes, resentful of the world, totally thrilled that her mom works at her school. Both parents think she spent Halloween at the other’s home — no way a 17-year-old would ever lie to parents and go somewhere she was forbidden to go, right?

Sarah’s father is dead and her mother has a high-roller job in Dubai, where Sarah didn’t get along with the ex-pat kids and moved to England to live with her cousin, Olivia, who treated Sarah like a sister. What you see on the surface is all there is, eh?

Olivia’s mother is present in body but kind of off in a drug-and-booze-addled world of no pain and little mental contact with the planet’s surface.

Olivia’s father is a big-time developer who’s bought off the local power structure and plans to turn the woods into cul-de-sac splendour — a move opposed by environmentalists, among whom Ellie is a ringleader.

There are various students and assorted faculty and good cops and loutish cops, who all predictably have secrets and who could be lying about, well, things.

Did we mention that Ben has never gotten over the death of his sister, who was killed by a driver high on drugs?

Richell spins her tale magnificently and ruthlessly — we’re sure we know who’s guilty, we’ve definitely sleuthed it and darned if the author doesn’t let us know each and every time that she’s in charge.

Richell is so good at this. It must be truly strange inside her head, for which we all can be thankful. Except Sarah.

Retired Free Press reporter Nick Martin knows all about verifying with multiple sources, but tell him the woods are haunted and he’ll skedaddle right quickly.