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The problem with the novel is, despite having a decent premise, the book fails to deliver. The story of a young woman named Beatrice (named for Dante’s heroine), The Witch’s Hammer follows us through a world of hundred thousand dollar antique books, murder, religion, and witchcraft – sort of. Beatrice, a recently divorced woman, has a father who collects antique books. When her father becomes the recipient of a very old and mysterious grimoire, he is murdered, and the book goes missing. Beatrice vows to find his killer, and throughout her personal investigation comes face to face (and ugly to ugly) with a cast of characters (or caricatures) including the debaucherous European, the shy bookworm, a philandering husband and a Latin lover.

The flaws in the novel are obvious and many. Firstly, there is Beatrice herself. She is a self-proclaimed feminist, but her feminist opinions equate to nothing more than ‘men are pigs, women are poor abused creatures’. In reality, Beatrice’s opinions come off as disgusting, unenlightened and abusive. She’s very caught up in pointing out injustices to women that she completely misses how everyone treats her almost with reverence.

But Beatrice isn’t just a bitch, she’s a castrating bitch. It is in this feature that she most particularly resembles her namesake; where Dante traversed Heaven and Hell to find his beloved Beatrice only to have her whine that he cheated on him once, so this Beatrice constantly verbally abuses her ex-husband for cheating on her. It’s no wonder he did, with her sudden revelation, mid way through the book, that she hates sex.

The villain of the novel is a collection of uber religious nuts who think that witches still exist in the form of – you guessed it – feminists. They use a little book called the Malleus Mallificarum as their bible. Now, for those of you not up on your witch history, the Malleus is a book written for inquisitors on their medieval quest to rid the world of witches, and as the book points out twice a page, it translates into the witch’s hammer (hence the title). Again, in concept the bad guys were interesting, but their dialogue is trite and they are too easily dispatched.

The plot features twists and turns that can be seen coming as easily as an elephant on flat stretch of land during a bright, clear day. In her prose, Hitchcock often tells us how to feel, for her description does not do the job. Her characters are flat and often ridiculous, and though the historical element of the novel is very interesting, the plot falls flat on its face. Not a very good read.

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