The Turnkey of Highgate Cemetery by Allison Rushby
Candlewick, 2018.
In this middle-grade historical fantasy, set in World War II, the ghosts of London attempt to foil a Nazi plot. Throw in a little Indiana Jones and you have a rather jumbled but sweet tale set during the Blitz.
12 year old Flossie died 16 years ago and is now the turnkey, or protector of the dead, in Highgate Cemetery – one of London’s “Magnificent Seven”. On her wanderings around London she sees a mysterious ghost in an SS uniform who seems to be able to do things that the dead aren’t usually able to. She investigates further and with the aid of the other turnkeys and several Chelsea Pensioners (retired veterans of the British army) she starts to find out what the Nazi has planned. There is also an affecting secondary plot about a young girl whose house is bombed and who hovers between life and death.
Rushby has created an interesting world, though its one in which the rules seem to be made up to suit the plot and coincidences abound. The kindly and gentle characters, all dead and white, seem to come from a nostalgic past in which stiff upper lips and the Blitz spirit were the norm, with the exception, of course, of the irredeemably evil Nazis. The Mayan crystal skull that the SS officer is using has more than a whiff of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Although clearly a labor of love for the author who weaves in many of her personal passions, this feels like it could have been written in the 1950’s and seems like it will have little appeal to American kids.
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