She also conjures up an authentic sense of the supernatural, from folk charms to Felix's sense of Fate, from Gothick descriptions of landscape to physical portrayals of their pursuers who uncannily appear when least expected. She creates verisimilitude in her evocation of the early nineteenth-century Basque country, both through historic details such as costume and language and through geography (it's possible to trace most of the two youngsters' journey on modern maps). But, not unexpectedly, things don't go to plan as they are chased by both the memory of the Abbot and a group of brigands.As always with Joan Aiken there is a comforting depth of assurance in her handling of people, places and plotting. Rescuing Juan, a youngster his own age, from hanging, they escape the terrifying Abbot Father Vespasian by trekking east before crossing the Pyrenees on their way to hoped-for freedom in Spain. He convalesces at the fictional Abbey of St Just de Seignanx, on the French coast near Bayonne, but finds that due a form of amnesia partly brought on by a supernatural happening he has lost three months of his life. In the aftermath years of the Napoleonic Wars young Felix Brooke is journeying from England to Galicia in Spain when he is shipwrecked off the Basque coast of France, thus precipitating the strange sequence of events in this novel. In 1999, Aiken was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for her services to children’s literature. For older readers, her books include the Edgar Award–winning Night Fall, and The Scream. Her other titles for younger readers include The Last Slice of Rainbow, The Kitchen Warriors, and Mice and Mendelson. It was during this time that she wrote her classic children’s novel The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (1962), which won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award and was the first in a 12-book series. Before writing full-time, Aiken worked at the United Nations Information Centre as well as the magazine Argosy. She began writing at a young age, publishing her first short story when she was 17 years old. Her father, Conrad Aiken, was a Pulitzer Prize–winning poet. She wrote 92 novels, including 27 for adults, as well as plays, poems, and short stories. Joan Aiken (1924–2004) was an English writer best known for her children’s literature.

A Touch of Chill by Joan Aiken