Picador £16.99 pp260

Marion Unger, arriving in Florida in 1888, is left depressed when her young husband suddenly dies. Trying to resume some kind of normal life, she orders a “transformation”, a small hair-piece, from Lucien Goulet, who also makes funeral jewellery using human hair. He is fascinated by Marion’s silver-blonde hair, and, unwittingly, she is soon caught up in his nightmare world. For Goulet despises his customers: “a woman is a pretty disguise; she is hooks and eyes”. He pays Rafael, a Cuban refugee, to collect hair; the boy spends his nights scavenging. Most of Goulet’s stock, a horrified Marion discovers, is plundered from the dead. Chidgey spins a horror story which, miraculously avoiding easy sensationalism, is both troubling and haunting.

ZORRO: The Novel
by Isabel Allende, translated by Margaret Sayers Peden

Fourth Estate £16.99 pp400

The swash-buckling Zorro, familiar in popular fiction and comics since 1919, takes on new life in Allende’s saga. (Labelling it “the novel” is presumably her acknowledgment of its flamboyant predecessors.) Diego de la Vega is born in southern California in 1790 to an aristocratic Spaniard and a Shoshone mother; his closest friend Bernardo belongs to the same tribe. Allende follows the pair through boyhood adventures and assorted love affairs; by the end Zorro has found true love, recovered his father’s estates, and dedicated his life to fighting for justice. The novel is never less than entertaining, but, disappointingly, never much more.

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