ONE'S interest in this book is raised at first touch and sight with its smooth feel and atmospheric. Monochrome front cover; the back, though, seizes the attention even more. For upon it is written an appreciation of the novel by no less a figure than E V Thompson, one of Cornwall's best known and most accomplished writers. He uses words which suggest quality writing and an intriguing plot; the reader will surely support his judgement.

Jane Nancarrow, who was born in Launceston and has lived most of her life in Cornwall, has penned a novel — her first, following much success as an award winning short story writer — which grips, intrigues and involves.

Indeed, this is a skilled, disciplined, yet imaginative piece of writing, the author drawing together and blending with subtlety, diverse elements of place, plot, time and mood.

Bodmin Moor is the setting, the time, essentially, the present, the central character a young woman named Poppy who has been touched by tragedy — the suicide of the man she loved.

She goes to live in a semi-derelict shepherd's cottage on the bleak moor — an unwise move in someone not in the rudest of mental health.

The author conveys with insight and subtlety how the ambience of the brooding wilderness all about her begins to dominate Poppy's troubled mind.

She further fuels her ever-increasing isolation and weakening grasp of reality by reading that most gothic of novels 'Wuthering Heights', with its surfeit of wild drama and malevolent spirits.

She then imagines that she herself sees a ghost, and is told it could be that of Charlotte Dymond who was brutally murdered on the moor in 1844, allegedly by her suitor, Matthew Weeks, who was hanged for the crime at Bodmin Gaol later that same year.

Poppy knows of the name and the dark deed thanks to a work by Launceston's most famous son, that sublime poet, Charles Causley.

The fragile state of her mind causes her slowly, but inexorably to be taken over by that murderous event of the mid-nineteenth century; she delves ever deeper into the background of the murder — becoming as she does so, ever more convinced that the hapless Weeks was executed for a crime he did not commit.

The author weaves seamlessly and astutely an increasingly dark but fascinating tale of obsession and possible injustice.

Poppy's fevered imagination and grief takes her mind on a roller coaster ride between the 19th and 21st centuries, with the tragic Charlotte, and her own great love, almost becoming as one to her, time and reality ceasing to exist until the novel reaches a dramatic, powerful conclusion.

In 'Stones and Shadows', Jane Nancarrow has leapt, with ease, a hurdle which has proved too high for many good writers in the past. She has progressed from the more casual, easy going world of short story writing to the greater discipline, depth and dedication of the novelist, with aplomb.

Her descriptive writing is vivid, never failing to capture environment and mood, her dialogue crisp and perceptive — no words wasted yet no emotion spurned.

Tragedy, romance, mystery, passion, crime, even terror — all are within the pages of this fascinating first novel. Those who read it will hope there are more to follow.

'Stones and Shadows' by Jane Nancarrow is published by SCRYFA (ISBN 978-0-9563990-1-1) and is available in bookshops, priced at

£8.50.

Ted Sherrell