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John Millen

The Bonehill Curse
Jon Mayhew
Published by Bloomsbury
ISBN 978 1 408803974
Many readers cherish a well-written Victorian thriller. The genre is always rich in character and plot. And so is The Bonehill Curse by Jon Mayhew, which blends a good old Victorian mystery with Middle Eastern magic. 
Mayhew is a master of the genre, and The Bonehill Curse is well up to the high standards of his earlier Mortlock and The Demon Collector. 
Anthony Bonehill is a rich man with a deadly secret. He has a teenage daughter, Necessity. Bonehill has sent his strong-willed daughter to a boarding school so that he can play a dangerous game that has put his family in great peril. He is power-hungry, and wants to use an ancient Arabian magic spell to call up a spirit who will bring him everything he wants. 
He has brought together six others to summon a djinn, a type of genie. The first six members of the group will make their wish, and then the seventh person will use his wish to kill the djinn so that it cannot gain revenge on the humans who have called it into being. What could be easier?
But Carlos Grossford, the all-important seventh person, fools the others. He decides to keep the djinn, and grab all the wealth and power he wants. 
Grossford himself meets a sticky end, but not before he gets the djinn back into its bottle - and sends the bottle to Necessity.
The scene is set for mystery and mayhem when she unknowingly opens the bottle and sets the vengeful djinn free. She travels to London to warn her father that the djinn is on the loose. When she finds her home burned down, Necessity sets off on a quest that takes her through the back streets of London - and eventually to mystical shores well beyond England. 
The Bonehill Curse is a gripping mixture of Victorian thriller and Arabian Nights magic. It blends the best of both storytelling traditions.
Necessity is a strong central character who starts out as a bored and selfish schoolgirl, but develops into a daredevil hero. 
It takes a writer of Mayhew's storytelling skills to turn fantasy into a gripping novel. He does just that in this tale of flying carpets and deadly revenge.




A curse, a djinn, and a teenage girl ensure a rollicking ride