The Woman in Black is both a brilliant exercise in atmosphere and controlled horror and a delicious spine-tingler -- proof positive that this neglected genre, the ghost story, isn't dead after all. What true readers do not yearn, somewhere in the recesses of their hearts, for a really literate, first-class thriller -- one that chills the body but warms the soul with plot, perception, and language at once astute and vivid? In other words, a ghost story written by Jane Austen? Alas, we cannot give you Austen, but Susan Hill's remarkable Woman in Black comes as close as our era can provide. Set on the obligatory English moor, on an isolated causeway, the story has as its hero Arthur Kipps, an up-and-coming young solicitor who has come north from London to attend the funeral and settle the affairs of Mrs.
