Review - The Ring
Indie '25 - Lap Nineteen
That is the problem with this life. The show must go on.
Step right up, step right up! Just this way folks to see the spectacle of a life time! Oh! Hello, Gov, and welcome to the show! Glad you could join us tonight for the Word Dump’s nineteenth Indie ‘25 review. And such a show we have for you as we take in the wondrous and the dangerous, the thrilling and the chilling, the spectacular spectacle that is Hanna Delaney’s Victorian Gothic crime drama The Ring.
Tickets please! Take your seats and enjoy the show…
Liverpool; Summer of 1893
Eager to test his mettle as a detective, Constable James Lacey is assigned the relatively tame case of a local thief who has gone missing. Enquiries into the dingy underbelly of Liverpool soon bring Lacey to the travelling circus run by Ringmaster Ezra Fontini, an unsettling eccentric who keeps his devoted performers close and his lips closed as Lacey asks his questions. In short order, however, Lacey finds his interest in the case slipping as it is in turn piqued by the lovely young aerialist Ellen French.
While at first the show delights the locals, it soon becomes somewhat suspect as strange occurrences begin around Liverpool. James Lacey turns up missing, witnesses bring reports of a something stalking the night, and the bodies begin to pile up, including that of the circus’s beautiful headliner. Binding the crimes together? The presence of an occult symbol; a ring made out of a serpent eating its own tail. Stumped, the police call on the aid of Inspector Daniel Muldoon; an expert in the unexplained and the strange.
Can Muldoon unravel the secrets of the ring to stop the parade of death? Can he solve the mystery of the circus and its tight-knit performers? And can he locate Constable Lacey before the unthinkable happens to him?
Time will tell as the show goes on…
Wow. That’s all I have to say after finishing this one. Just… wow. Mystery novels, even ones flavoured with supernatural elements or horror, can be a little one-dimensional, but that is far from the case here. The Ring is so multi-faceted and has so many layers to it that it forces you to take your time lest you miss something. I knew Delaney was a great storyteller (as I read Oceanus earlier this year), but this is another level entirely.
Billed as a crime thriller, The Ring is just so much more than that. It’s got elements of supernatural horror on par with The Haunting of Hill House or The X-Files; it’s got twists of tragedy and romanticism reminiscent of Shakespeare that pulls at your heartstrings; and it’s a true piece of historical fiction that lets you taste the grungy air of Liverpool at the time of the industrial revolution, so fleshed out that you could believe that this actually happened if you didn’t know better. Not to mention the comedic relief spiced in at appropriate times throughout the novel.
‘Wait here,’ my large slavic friend said, gesturing for me to stand still. He ducked his head—being a giant of a man—and went inside. I heard a couple male voices talking quietly and a moment later, the giant reappeared. ‘You may go in,’ he said.”
“…and you’re doing the accents as well, eh?”
“Sorry, sir.”
“Carry on.”
All that said, The Ring is still very much the crime thriller that it is presented at. Without spoiling any details of the plot, I have to say that the setting seems mundane until the circus’s arrival and subsequent misdoings begin to unravel the normality rapidly, with Delaney tossing out ribbons in wild arcs that threaten to overwhelm until they begin to come back together and everything is wrapped back up in a neat little package, bow and all. And walking you through the plot is a dynamic cast of characters, both the heroes and the villains, that are so tangibly real that you can’t help but fall in love with.
In terms of fictional detectives, Muldoon is up there with the likes of Hercule Poirot. He is observant and has the sort of out-of-the-box thinking that reminds you somewhat of Poirot, but with a bit of supernatural sensitivity that gives him a bit of a spooky aura and eccentricities of those who see a little more than other folks do, if you know what I mean. Plus the fact that he’s an Irish cop just feels oddly comfortable. Who doesn’t love an Irish cop? He’s the perfect sort to wade into the dark mystery of the circus as it becomes ever more apparent that something just isn’t right with the folk there.
On the other side of the fence, we are primarily brought through life in the circus by the entrancing Ellen French, who you’ll fawn over almost as much as the vanished Constable Lacey does. Born into the show, Ellen straddles the line between being on the inside and the outside as she struggles to step away from the darkness under the big top. She’s something of an unreliable narrator; on the surface she is a sweet, seventeen year old girl who lives with passion and wants nothing more than to escape her circumstances but as we begin to see the inner workings of the circus, as well as the history of why they are happening, those are all told through Ellen’s murky memories and cryptic dreams that don’t make sense… until they do.
Every night, the petals fall onto my face, mourners watch and weep as earth slips from the edge of the shovel and buries me, forever. The Death comes. Death mocks me. Death is always with me. Death suffocates me when I want nothing more than to breathe.
Sitting central in The Ring (heh) is the menacing, unsettling ringmaster Ezra Fontini. Dressed all in white, with gold teeth and an unblinking glass eye, and with a bullwhip always to hand, Fontini is a figure that is impossible to pin down throughout the duration of the novel. He seems intelligent, conniving, crafty, but seemingly innocent at all turns beyond a boisterous preformative appearance. From the get go Fontini leaves you feeling somewhat sullied, but you can’t quite figure out why. Is he suspect? Is he just unhinged? Is he innocent, guilty, or something else entirely? Of all the characters in The Ring, Fontini is definitely the most intriguing and will keep you on your toes from the get-go.
I think that one of the other reasons that this novel just feels so real is that Delaney has woven the history of Liverpool into both the settings and the characters. Real historical figures are woven into the narrative alongside real world events that walk hand in hand with the fiction and give it more depth than it already had. That was a neat addition that I, for one, greatly appreciated. Realism and paranormal side by side. Wonderful.
Overall, this is another five star read for my year and I have every intention of reading The Spider, which is the first Muldoon mystery (Yeah, I read them out of order. Come at me.), but would fully recommend this one to any fans of paranormal mysteries with a classic detective feel to them.
Grab a copy of The Ring today! Oh! And leave a review because this one is up for Amazon UK’s Storyteller Contest for 2025 and fully deserves the win.
Cheers
Bump-bump-bump, another one bites the dust….
Indie read #19 is in the books, #20 is all queued up. Stay tuned for the announcement of what that is and thanks as always for reading The Word Dump!
Cheers!
Yes to all of this 💪💪💪 (the quote with the accents is a piece I highlighted in my copy, too 🤣🤣🤣 loved it)
Thank you. I'm so glad you enjoyed it. Weaving all those threads together, I kind of understood why George Martin developed a terrible habit of leaving sinkholes in his chapters. Glad I took the register again at the end of the trip.