Friday Firsts is a new meme that runs every Friday over on Tenacious Reader. The idea is to feature the first few sentences/paragraph of your current book and try and outline your first impressions as a result. This is a quick and easy way to share a snippet of information about your current read and to perhaps tempt others.  Stop on by and link up with Tenacious Reader.    This Friday I’m reading : The Curious Affair of the Somnambulist & the Psychic Thief (The Curious Affair Of #1) by Lisa Tuttle

I admit that I did not plan my escape very well, but the fact is that I had not planned it at all.

It was the end of June, 1893, and I had been in Scotland for barely two weeks, a guest in a grand (if somewhat ominous, chilly, and underpopulated country house where I had intended to remain for at least another month, along with my friend Miss Gabrielle Fox.  Or, rather, my erstwhile friend.  The thought of Gabrielle, who must by now have discovered by defection, made my stomach plunge, and I felt ill with nerves and unhappiness as I sat, shut in alone in my sleeping compartment while the night express rocked and swayed and rattled through the border country.  I could ill afford the extra five shillings for a private compartment, but I had paid, because that is what a lady must do.  Even though I did not expect to be able to sleep, I lacked the energy to remain as alert and vigilant as one must be in a third-class carriage against importunate strangers.

Gabrielle Fox, known to readers who follow the reports published by the Society for Psychical Research as ‘Miss X,’ had been my closest companion for nearly four years.  although she had originally been my employer, by the time economic difficulties forced an end to that arrangement, a sympathetic understanding had developed, and our relationship became a partnership in which we shared work and its rewards equally.  When she was hired by the SPR to conduct investigations into various types of supernatural phenomena or to test the claims made by mediums and spiritualists of all kinds, I went as her assistant and wrote up our findings for publication.

Then Miss Fox was put in charge of an official SPR investigation into a haunted house in Perthshire.  Instead of being part of a larger team, she had absolute authority to decide how to conduct the affair, when or if to bring in experts (and of what sort), and told expense was no obstacle.  The house was turned over to us – the owner had gone abroad, leaving a small staff to manage the upkeep at our direction, a coach and horses also at our disposal.

My First Impressions

It all sounds too good to be true doesn’t it?  And, yes, a huge ‘but’ is obviously looming – otherwise why would our protagonist be scarpering off on a train in the middle of the night, running away from something by the sounds of it.  I like the style of writing, insofar as I can make a judgement from such a small snippet and I’m very keen to read on.

What you reading this Friday??  What are your first impressions??

*The above excerpt was taken from an advanced reader copy and it is possible that the final version may have further changes.