When 13-year-old Joey McDermot is sent to Newfoundland to spend Christmas with his recently widowed aunt, he goes under protest. Aunt Corinne has no television and, grief-stricken over the drowning of her husband, she isn’t likely to be very entertaining. When Joey arrives in Monk’s Cove, things are indeed abysmal. The house is a wreck, there’s no food, and Aunt Corinne is semi-suicidal. On top of that, there are weird happenings around the village, including seances and ghastly apparitions. The mysterious mummer, however, doesn’t show up (or even get mentioned) until the end, when he plays the fiddle at a St. Stephen’s Day party. His playing whips the guests into a devil-possessed dancing frenzy designed to make Aunt Corinne’s house fall off the cliff so that she can join her husband in the land of the dead. After Joey saves the day, the novel ends abruptly, as if the narrative – instead of the cliff edge – had been sheared off.

It’s not just the ending that seems incomplete. The novel lacks cohesion generally – it’s more a collection of thrills and chills than a sustained mystery. The writing is solid enough, and includes interesting details about occult practices and Newfoundland cultural traditions. But there are also beginnings of character and theme development that, frustratingly, aren’t continued. L.M. Falcone, who is based in Toronto, has worked as a screenwriter for the preteen series Are You Afraid of the Dark? She has a knack for suspenseful scenes, but I saw potential for a better developed novel, and was left wanting more.