''Naomi's Room'' is a 1991 horror novel by

Northern Irish Northern Irish people is a demonym for all people born in Northern Ireland or people who are entitled to reside in Northern Ireland without any restriction on their period of residence. Most Northern Irish people either identify as Northern ...

author

Jonathan Aycliffe Denis M. MacEoin (26 January 1949 – 6 June 2022) was a British academic, scholar and writer with a focus on Persian, Arabic and Islamic studies. He authored several academic books and articles, as well as many pieces of journalism. Since 2014 ...

Plot introduction

Pembroke College academic Charles Hillenbrand looks back on his life and his marriage to Laura, who gave up her job at the

Fitzwilliam Museum The Fitzwilliam Museum is the art and antiquities museum of the University of Cambridge. It is located on Trumpington Street opposite Fitzwilliam Street in central Cambridge. It was founded in 1816 under the will of Richard FitzWilliam, 7th Vis ...

on the birth of their daughter Naomi. On Christmas Eve 1970, Charles took his four-year-old daughter on a shopping trip from

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...

to London by train. Naomi disappeared in

Hamleys Hamleys is a British multinational toy retailer, owned by Reliance Retail. The world's oldest toy store, it was founded by William Hamley as "Noah's Ark" in High Holborn, London, in 1760. It moved to its current site on Regent Street in London's ...

toy shop, and days later her mutilated body was discovered in Spitalfields. But Naomi does not rest in peace and Charles and Laura are haunted by her presence as other murders follow. The policeman leading the investigation is found with his throat cut in the crypt of a church near Brick Lane, then a press photographer who had shown Charles disturbing images in the photos he had taken is murdered, parts of his body found strewn along a Spitalfields alley...

Reception

*"A Chilling story which gives the lie to any notion that supernatural horror is remotely therapeutic. Aycliffe has a fine touch." ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publish ...

''Cover notes, 2013 Corsair edition *"A powerful psychological ghost story... the residual spirit of

Jack the Ripper Jack the Ripper was an unidentified serial killer active in and around the impoverished Whitechapel district of London, England, in the autumn of 1888. In both criminal case files and the contemporaneous journalistic accounts, the killer w ...

complicates matters and initially seems to intrude too much on the core story, but Aycliffe eventually resolves things quite neatly."''Encyclopedia of Fantasy and Horror Fiction'' by

Don D'Ammassa Donald Eugene D'Ammassa (born April 24, 1946) is an American fantasy, science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts ...

References

1991 British novels British horror novels Novels set in Cambridge HarperCollins books Ghost novels Novels set in London Cultural depictions of Jack the Ripper {{1990s-ghost-novel-stub