Salter's first novel, The Bone Snatcher, opens with Sophie, a young girl, trying to escape from a man who has taken her hostage in order to drive her to an island in the middle of the sea. Her parents, desperate for money to buy tickets to the New Continent, have sold her to the family that live in a dilapidated mansion on the island. Set in a dystopian future, the novel explains its basic premise that an illness called Sea Fever has struck the population, and the only way to escape it and live a happy life is to buy passage on a boat to the New Continent, a land of sunshine and bright blue skies.
Sophie, however, is doomed to stay on the island in the catacombs with Mister Scree, the servant, feeding bones to the sea monsters that lurk in the watery depths and trying not to make the insane twins and their mother who habit the main house too angry. Then Cartwright appears with his manic horse, Manic, and he has an altogether different sort of plan.
What really struck me about this novel is Salter's atmospheric way of writing. I felt every slimy shudder that Sophie experienced, revelling in her developing relationship with the monsters, and holding my breath in suspense as she dodged and crept around the various parts of the house. I found the stories within stories that Sophie wove, in her role as storyteller, fascinating and captivating. Such is the power of stories.
I very much hope there will be a sequel where we find out what Sophie does next and I look forward to enjoying more of Salter's superb writing and storytelling skills.
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