Changes

|title=The Woman in Black: Angel of Death

|sort=Woman in Black: Angel of Death, The

|publisher=Hammer

|date=October 2013

|summary=Possibly not to the taste of all the millions who enjoyed the original short novel, but this World War Two-based frightener is just as enjoyable – and is in no way merely an advert for the film version.

}}

It's here at last – the novel of the script of the sequel to the film of the book – that was always better as a stage-play. I'll maintain as long as you like that the play is the best way to witness [[The Woman in Black by Susan Hill]], purely for the added extra of the final frisson – that you'll be carrying the story with you when you leave. Making sequels to the film, what with its departures from the source, certainly don't marry up with that – instead of the ghost going away into the audience it's instead as if the new characters are compelled into her domain – but either way, the dread inevitability of all the best ghost stories are on these pages.

The writing is never going to win a Booker, but that's not important – it will work and force you to sit with your back to the wall. It's not flawless – the tides on the causeway over to the House are very conveniently absent when people need to use it, and the 'you thought we'd stop at two??!!' ending is a bum note. Before then we have a very sensitive and sensible evocation of the horrors of the War, the return of a genre classic given a fresh-blood revivification, in both senses, and an albeit lower-brow but no less effective chiller. This is the first return to the best haunted house of the last thirty years, and it's a very welcome and enjoyable ride.

This is another great title in the burgeoning Hammer library - and with books such as [[The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson]] elsewhere, we're smitten. But we're also wondering when people will latch on to other Susan Hill horrors, such as [[Dolly by Susan Hill|Dolly]] or [[The Man in the Picture by Susan Hill|The Man in the Picture]].