Review: Hokey Pokey by Kate Mascarenhas

The 1920s is such a special decade, full of discords. The bright young things and the shell-shocked. The optimism for the future and the inevitability of more war. The development of travel technology and the closing in of nationalism. It’s famous, of course, for Lovecraft’s existential horror, and the beginning of the golden age of crime. And Hokey Pokey sits somewhere squarely between that monstrous horror and desire for a good cosy mystery, with some cultural dissonance mixed in for good measure.

Hokey Pokey follows Nora, a psychiatrist and apparent investigator, as she follows opera icon Berenice to the opulent Regent Hotel in Birmingham, hoping to find evidence of her infidelity to report back to Berenice’s husband. However, a snow storm and some grisly murders mean that Nora and Berenice are stuck together, stranded in the hotel, and find common ground as they investigate further. This precis fails to cover the monstrous weirdness that also pervades this book, seeping in at its edges, like the melting snow outside the Regent, until the book is flooded with it.

At first, I wasn’t sure I was going to like Nora. I have a dislike for detectives who have some kind of otherworldly skill that means only they can solve mysteries — think Sherlock Holmes’s extra-ordinary feats of deduction, or Will Graham’s ‘affinity’ for serial killers. At first Nora appears to have an otherworldly skill … but then it is situated as otherworldly. Nora is very much not your average detective, and this somehow levels the playing field, as the very nature of her extraordinariness comes to the fore of the story.

In Berenice, there is the perfect celebrity idol, in this decade that was just starting to understand the power of celebrity. Berenice brings a glamour and hedonism that is infectious, and I very much enjoyed Nora falling under her spell. It always makes me happy when an apparently heteronormative narrative turns Sapphic!

While the mystery comes to play second fiddle to the weirder, more fairytale-like elements of the story, Hokey Pokey is still an excellent read for those who like to identify a monster. And while it’s not apparent from the very beginning, the horror and fantastical elements in Hokey Pokey will appeal to a wide range of niche audiences.

Hokey Pokey is released on June 8th, and is available to preorder here.

Review written with thanks to the publishers and Netgalley.co.uk for providing an e-advanced review copy.