At 670 pages, The Distant Hours is a daunting and hefty book. But once you have opened it, it is easy to lose yourself inside the wonderful world that Morton has created. The book begins with the prologue of ‘The True History of the Mud Man’, a children’s story by the fictional author Raymond Blythe. This story is mentioned time and again throughout the book and is one of the many threads holding the plots together. Although we never actually get a chance to read the whole of The Mud Man, it is soon clear that it is vital to the storyline and to the lives of all the characters.

The main narrator of The Distant Hours is thirty year old editor, Edie Burchill. When a long-lost letter is received in the post, half a century late, an interest in her mother’s past is awakened. Curiosity and coincidence bring Edie to the very place where the letter came from.  One thing leads to another and soon Edie is drawn into the spellbinding mystery of the Sisters Blythe and Milderhurst Castle.  Continue reading →