The Lodge by Chris Coppel

Book Review

Title: The Lodge by Chris Coppel

Genre: Mystery, Thriller

Rating: 5 Stars

I haven’t read anything by Chris Coppel before but I love mystery and thriller novels and the synopsis really got my attention. We are introduced to Constable Andrew Whiting who is a police officer working in the Scottish Highlands which is a boring and cold posting until one night he gets a call about someone being found dead at the Waylight B & B. On the drive there, Andrew has a strange encounter with a stag as when he touches it to move it out the way of his car, he gets a vision of a car crash and a strange sensation which quickly passes. This might be hinting at something to come but we know once Andrew arrives at the Waylight he isn’t going to be leaving for a while due to the horrendous weather conditions. Here he learns that a guest called Alan chocked during dinner which was ironically the quail he shot that same day and while the others tried to help remove the bone from his throat and performed CPR they were unsuccessful. Andrew, however, has bigger problems as the weather is getting worse and they are in for a real snowstorm but in order for everyone to stay at the Lodge, the scene needs to be documented and the body removed but Andrew’s car won’t make it in the snow and his only chance is the owner’s 4 by 4 but he has been having trouble with it as well as the phones but Andrew decides to give it a shot.

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Andrew quickly finds out that the car won’t run as a pack of rats have chewed through the fuel lines and they have also damaged the phone line which also powers the internet so Andrew, Elena, Helen, Leon and the 9 remaining guests are trapped at the Lodge. In between the main plot we also get some background on the characters in the form of little flashbacks to give you a sense of the characters and their relationships to each other which I found really interesting. As the snow fall gets heavier, Andrew has no choice but to spend the night at the Lodge and they have to find a way to preserve the body the best they can with what they have so Alan’s body ends up in the meat dresser where it won’t freeze but it minimize the risk of contamination. The following morning this get stranger when a woman claims that her knife cut her hand but she words it in a way that makes it seem like the knife had a mind of its own which seems insane. They also realise around this time that the Lodge is completely snowed in and they will be stuck there for a while until the weather improves and Andrew uses this time to begin questioning the other guests on the events on the night of Alan’s death.

Andrew spends the next hour or so interviewing everyone that was present at the dinner including Elena who tells Andrew that Alan did choke on a bone but he hadn’t started eating his quail yet which begs the question where did the bone come from. However, things continue to get stranger when Alan’s body completely disappears and yet there is no sign of anyone else being around as the snow would show human footprints or car tracks which is unlikely given the weather. Andrew much like Elena continue to avoid the meat, not because he is vegan but because he has an intolerance to white flour meaning he can’t eat a lot of the meat dishes on offer. As Andrew slowly gets to know the guests he is beginning to realise how cold and callous most of them are when they make jokes about Alan being the only body he has seen when he had to identify the remains of his parents after a bad car crash, and then they proceed to kill and doe and fawn who wandered too close to the Lodge purely for fun as they have plenty of meat stored for weeks. The strange happening continue when one of the guests claiming to have been deliberately tripped by the zebra rug claiming it moved but it is more likely to be the four bloody Mary’s he consumed. So far, the atmosphere is interesting as are the guest but I am hoping for something more substantial that a disappearing body and the furniture playing minor tricks on the guests as the most dangerous “trick” we have seen is a woman’s knife cutting her which is chalked up to an accident.

Learning more about the characters is one of the most interesting aspects about the novel so far as we know relatively little about them including Andrew even though we are almost halfway through. Things do begin to get more interesting as there seems to be a relationship developing between Elena and Andrew who are the only ones at this point who haven’t seen anything strange around the Lodge. Leon is the next target as he ventures into the basement to deal with the boiler which is acting up in the bad weather when suddenly the hunting relics in the basement begin moving. At first, Leon thinks it is his imagination acting up in the dark and slightly creepy basement but very quickly they begin circling him almost coming to life in hunting position to attack him but he is saved when Helen comes down to check on him and everything returns to normal. As she takes him upstairs to treat a burn on his arm he looks back down to see a stuffed cat scampering across the floor. Given that we don’t know much about the characters and their existing mental state we can’t say whether this actually happened or whether it was a delusional Leon suffered. Another guest witnesses something similar but rather than moving stuffed animals she sees the dead body of Alan being held up by masses of birds which makes sense since he was a birdwatcher but no one else saw it. Despite this Andrew does spot a single dark feather sitting on top of the undisturbed snow giving some weight to what Mrs. Adams saw but he still thinks it is impossible since Alan was clearly dead when he arrived.

The creep factor is slowly rising but there still isn’t much happening and I was waiting for another murder or serious injury of some sort to make the book really suck me in. More and more strange events keep happening around the Lodge and I think I am beginning to understand why. We have seen that both Andrew and Elena are exempt from these attacks, and I think this is because they both have a huge compassion for animals. Elena has this compassion because she is a vegan but Andrew’s comes from the car accident that killed his parents as the lorry that killed them was an animal transporter and he saw how badly the animals were killed and injured in that crash and he formed a sort of bond with them. Leon also seems to be targeted more than most even though he hasn’t really shown some of the callousness we have seen from some of the other guests, although I have to say the attack of the Christmas tree and Leon’s reactions afterwards were hilarious and literally made me laugh out loud despite the serious mood the book has tried to build. As we are getting close to the end of the novel I was hoping for the tension to begin rising now to drive towards the climax of the novel.

We get to learn more about Andrew’s history and how nothing went right for him after the death of his parents, he spent almost a month completely catatonic until a therapy dog was brought in to help him. After this he was released to the care of his grandmother but she spent months being harassed by a development company who was trying to buy her house even going as far as to kill her cat and physically injure the woman. While in hospital his grandmother contracting an infection and died meaning Andrew ended up in a children’s home where he suffered greatly until he was adopted. He got on well with the couple whose son had died in Iraq and was swiftly chosen as their foster child when he confesses he is a vegetarian probably from the animals he saw in the crash but it seems he finally found his footing in life again. Meanwhile, back in the present a couple of the guest are out hunting on Christmas day when they find themselves surrounded by deer who quickly trample the couple and it seems we are gearing towards the climax now but I honestly have no idea what it could involve. As we learn more about the characters we see connections between them that weren’t there before and it suddenly makes a lot more sense why these guests are being targeted. When another guest died and 3 are now missing, things are becoming stranger and stranger with seemingly no explanation but I have a feeling there might be a shocking twist in the final section of the novel.

The final section of The Lodge really brings everything together and while there weren’t any huge twists towards the end of the novel, the ones that were there were amazingly well executed and really brought together all the creepy elements that have been scattered throughout the novel. Learning the truth behind the strange occurrences at The Lodge was brilliant and the ending which sets it up to happen all over again was brilliant. I will definitely be checking out more of Chris Coppel’s work in the future. Highly recommended!

Buy it here:

Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com

Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com

I received this review copy from Edelweiss