The Shadow Key

Listeners are immersed in 1780s Wales in Stokes-Chapman’s suspenseful follow-up to her debut, Pandora. Welsh actor Richard Harrington’s rich accent and sublime pacing pair perfectly with Stokes-Chapman’s atmospheric writing and gothic setting—the starkly beautiful but vaguely sinister village of Penhelyg. Harrington expertly evokes Dr. Henry Talbot’s trepidation as he reluctantly settles in the Welsh countryside as the Tresilian family’s private physician after having lost his London surgery post due to an embarrassing scandal. Henry is shocked by the suspicious nature of the villagers, many of whom detest the British landowners, including Henry’s employer, Lord Julian Tresilian. While Julian directs Henry to watch his mentally fragile sister-in-law and her daughter, Henry finds the conditions of the mines and villagers’ struggles much more problematic. Harrington smoothly manages the shifts in point-of-view as Henry and Linette slowly begin to uncover the true horror behind the gentry’s desire to mine deeper into the earth, regardless of the cost to the miners.