Orlando Wysocki’s thrilling, historical mystery, The Cleaving of Paycocke’s, is a spiritual riddle wrapped inside an enigma. This non-linear, semi-fictitious novel is set around the huge, labyrinthine beauty of Paycocke’s House.

Built in Coggeshall, Essex early in the sixteenth century, Paycocke’s appealed to Edwardian classical composer Gustav Holst as a romantic family residence. Yet it’s dark, forbidding past cursed its constructors and troubled its occupants. Are its haunted mysteries destined to be unknown?

Wysocki is an adept story-teller: vivid character dialogue colours a plot rife with subterfuge, lies and deception. The only exemption is trusting, affable book-trader Simon Chance. His wife Robin leaves him for her lover; acquaintance Martin Sparrow returns with a devious secret agenda whilst Simon learns his own daughters’ troubling secrets.

Alternating between Tudor, Edwardian and modern sagas, the plot’s numerous conundrums are cleverly resolved when the present merges with the past.

Original house owner John Paycocke’s controversial secret that threatens his family’s name is kept by William Spooner, subsequently cursed after concealing evidence of evil deeds in the house’s panelled room. Paycocke’s son, Thomas, vows to absolve his father’s guilt.

Centuries later, Holst’s daughter, Imogen, repeatedly experiences the presence of childrens’ spirits. Her friend, Edward, hands Imogen a key to the house’s secrets, and his, sadly, unrequited love.

As the narrative threads of three ages coalesce, Thomas, Imogen and Simon simultaneously unearth the truth behind the panelled wall....