Street of Death
Mary Ann Mitchell
Medallion Press
ISBN: 978-1932815849
2007

In many ways this book does itself no favors.  The title is appalling, reminiscent of the worst of cheesy horror comics of the 1950s.  The cover is not attractive, being a predominantly brown image of a closed door topped with a skull.  Even the listing of it as horror feels wrong.  It is certainly a dark book, but horror?

There are no demons, no zombies, vampires, ghouls, spirits, evil magicians, ghosts or any of the supernatural staples.  Neither will you find a Hannibal Lector-type human evil, no serial killers to be found anywhere.  But this is not a book that should just be dismissed by horror fans because of the complete absence of any of the elements gracing the pages of their typical reading fodder.

This book is wonderfully edgy; there is a real undercurrent of doom throughout.  But unlike the types of evil portrayed above, the unease here is caused by a force that is supposedly striving for good—the Christian Church in Spain during the days of Inquisition.

Teresa's life to this point has been sheltered.  She has been raised by the nuns, rarely setting foot outside the safe confines of the convent.  Her Jewish mother left her, as a base, in the care of the nuns to give her a better chance of a good life.  She is totally unaware of her origins, the nuns keeping her mother's secret and sparing Teresa from a life of persecution; merely being Jewish in medieval Spain was a crime.

Teresa's safe seclusion is about to come to an end, however, when she is tasked with acting as nursemaid to the dying merchant Senor Roberto Velez.  Like her, Velez's origins are Jewish.  He is a converso, having renounced his former faith and converted to Catholicism.  This change has left him (relatively) free to live and trade, although to live under constant suspicion, the authorities never quite believing his conversion to be true.

Roberto has lived a long life through his great political skill, knowing just how to make the right allies, those who would be able to keep the Inquisitors at bay.  His son though does not share his gift, and so it is a dangerous time to be associated with the Velez household, especially if you also are of Judaic origin.

This is fairly hard-hitting.  It doesn't shy away from the darker elements of life during the inquisition.  Without being graphic, Mitchell manages to include torture, incest, rape and executions.  She portrays a world in which you certainly wouldn't want to be suspected of heresy.  The Inquisition is a very palpable threat throughout the book, without ever feeling over the top.  It is present simply as part of life, one of those things you just have to get on with.

The characters are, for the most part, unlikeable.  The elderly merchant is a thorough rogue, having lived a life of bribery, corruption and debauchery, having indulged his every desire no matter how twisted—including incest.  The priests he associates with are blatant hypocrites, participating in activities they preach against without any sign of a conscious.  And the Velez household staff are mostly self-centered, keen on maintaining their position at the expense of all others.

The only two characters that any reader will find even remotely palatable are Teresa and Roberto's son Luis.  And this works wonderfully well in one respect.  It very quickly becomes apparent that Luis is living on borrowed time, and the protection his father's political allies have afforded the family will die with him.  Luis lacks the guile to build his own relationships and ensure his future survival.  He picks his fights using emotion rather than any sense of self-preservation.

Teresa also seems doomed. It’s just a matter of time until the heretic (and entirely accidental) circumstances of her birth become common knowledge and the Inquisition bring her to their idea of justice, despite all her good works.  You get the feeling it's not going to be a happily-ever-after.

I did say it was dark.

     -- I. E. Lester