In the year 2024, middle-aged Pip Durrant has become a successful author on sabbatical at Oxford University, but is still troubled by harrowing visions of the supernatural figure who has dogged him since childhood: the loathsome Piper. He is now on a quest to find the Piper’s blasphemous autobiography, the Codex, in the hope that it will help him finally to overcome this ancient evil. But as events lead him and his friends back to the Romanian village of Arva, with its gruesome history of ritual child rape and murder, what new terrors lie in store for them?
The Codex is the long-awaited final book in acclaimed author Helen McCabe’s chilling Piper trilogy.
338pp. B-format paperback novel.
ISBN: 978-1845839239
Published 31 July 2016<
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Helen McCabe is a highly regarded author whose love of writing and powerful imagination, coupled with a determination to succeed, have ensured a long and successful career. Her lifelong fascination with literature, history and research and an interest in the paranormal have enhanced Helen’s immense gift for creative storytelling.
She graduated with Honours from London University, where she read English, and holds an MA degree in 18th Century English Literature from the University of Keele.
Her long career began with her first novel at the age of seven, with poetry published at 13 and read on the BBC. She started her true career as a novelist after becoming well-known for her short stories and serials in popular magazines. In 1995 her first full-length novel – Two for a Lie, about the 19th Century Princess Caraboo – was published, gaining much interest and critical acclaim. Since then, in tandem with work and family, she has written more than 30 novels in various genres, including historical, romance and more recently horror/thriller and crime. She also writes scripts for film, television and the stage.
Alongside her writing, Helen has worked in a variety of jobs, beginning as an assistant librarian and finally as a lecturer and teacher. She is a member of the Romantic Novelists Association, the Crime Writers’ Association, the Horror Writers of America and the West Country Writers’ Association.
Helen was invited to join Mensa, the high IQ Society, in 1989.
Helen lives in Worcester and has three grown-up children and a grandson.
Her website can be found at www.helenmccabe.com.
Geoff Nelder –
Ever since I saw the quaint, historical town of Hamlein from atop the shoulders of my father and chortled in delight at the re-enactment of the Pied Piper with his flute, luring the town’s children away, I’ve been absorbed by the genre. Of course, as a toddler I didn’t know it wasn’t real. Yet, that notion returns to bite me in the bum with Helen McCabe’s Piper trilogy. Why? Because The Codex didn’t stop in the middle ages. The piper is transformed and with us today!
The eponymous object, The Codex, refers to an ancient alternative Bible compiled by the dark side around 800 AD. Evil leaks from this tome and part of the mission by Pip is to seek the whole of the Codex and render it harmless. Forces are out to stop him and manifest themselves in unknown ways. This is a quest and in a kind of recursive, self-referencing way. I yearn to write a successful recursive story and find them as rare as black daisies. Not that the Codex has recursive elements. For instance it is the third volume of a trilogy. The protagonist is a writer needing to promote his third book of a trilogy, which in itself is a kind of Codex. It’s as if the readers are invited to be involved in drawing out the hidden elements of horror and evil not just written as writhing inside this novel.
As usual McCabe is a mistress of the artful word although I’m uncertain whether the Codex itself has its finger on her pen as for example: “ …a headache…skinny string reediness that crept through his skull and stuck like a hapless insect in his memory web.” The author is enviably skilled in oblique dialogue – I already refer my editing clients to chunks of her Piper stories for these writing masterclass elements.
Interesting left-field logic is used throughout such as should a virgin avoid the beast’s attention by giving herself to a willing lad and so change her sexual status?
In Codex we have medieval hardcore horror meeting the 21st Century where “secrets breed lies”