There’s a famously unsolved World War II-era mystery known as ‘Bella in the Wychelm’ about a group of schoolboys who found a dead woman’s body stuffed into the trunk of a tree. Who was the woman, where did she come from, and what caused her to become such a fatal part of the landscape? Could witchcraft have been involved, or was she a Nazi double agent? Over the decades, speculations have veered from the wild to the mundane and I’ve often wondered why it’s taken someone so long to be inspired by the story and use it as the launch pad for a work of fiction. Or maybe someone already did but I missed it. I’ve been quite busy.

So, with that in mind you can imagine how quickly I snapped up James Brogden’s The Hollow Tree after reading a synopsis that sounded tantalisingly familiar: ‘After her hand is amputated following a tragic accident, Rachel Cooper suffers vivid nightmares of a woman imprisoned in the trunk of a hollow tree, screaming for help… Rachel can’t help but think of the mystery of Oak Mary, a female corpse found in a hollow tree, and who was never identified.’ It’s a nice set-up, and when Rachel dreams of the screaming woman and then inexplicably pulls her out into our world it promises all the ingredients of a satisfying ghost story/dark-forces-are-going-get-you-because-you’re-not-supposed-to-be-here sort of campfire hokum. And considering that Brogden’s previous bestseller Hekla’s Children gave this writer the willies and that I’m a sucker for a well-told folk horror tale, The Hollow Tree seemed like a book that couldn’t miss. But unfortunately it does and I’m still not quite sure why.

It’s certainly interesting, and there are one or two moments that may have you glancing nervously over your shoulder as you read, but ultimately, The Hollow Tree feels like a 440-page version of a dodgy paranormal TV show we’ve seen too many times before more than a fully rendered literary ghost story. There’s also a vibe of The Sixth Sense about the narrative that, for this reader, killed a lot of its enjoyment.  But maybe my biggest problem with The Hollow Tree lies in Brogden’s writing style, which is strange because I enjoyed his last book so much. It’s very workmanlike prose, well-structured and without frills, but it doesn’t enfold you the way the best ghost stories should. Sometimes it feels like the treatment for an upcoming movie, and that sense of distance between the reader and the material really harms Brogden’s storytelling. Instead of keeping us on the edge of our seat it makes us sit back and observe and question what’s going on which is fatal for a genre that relies so heavily upon the reader’s total intellectual immersion – after all, if we’re keeping the ghost at arm’s length, how can it truly frighten us?

Or maybe, because I love the true story that inspired it so much, I’ve set my own internal bar too high.

As paranormal thrillers go, The Hollow Tree isn’t a failure but it’s not exactly a success either. I’m still looking forward to Brogden’s next book but I hope this one doesn’t branch out into a sequel…

THE HOLLOW TREE / AUTHOR: JAMES BROGDEN / PUBLISHER: TITAN BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: MARCH 13TH