Dinner With Eloise

"The greatest strength of the supernatural is that most people don't believe in it."

On a warm spring day, Jacques Georges de Vere ventures out of his isolated cottage and into the local village. Haunted by the tyranny of depressive illness, he’s determined to move on with life. With his medication safely locked in a drawer, Jack stumbles upon the local pub where the music, company and beer are like a return to long ago happier times. It’s here that Jack meets a beautiful stranger – a woman with a soft Parisian accent, dressed in black and with dark eyes that seem to penetrate the soul. But who is she, and does she know things about Jack that he barely knows himself?

Jack is transfixed and a passionate love affair ensues in her crumbling mansion. But there is something odd about this mysterious lady who appears from nowhere, her affinity for the dark, her cold skin and her musky sensuous odor. So when Jack makes an unexpected and horrific discovery, fear takes hold as he starts to question whether his life may be in mortal danger.

Dinner with Eloïse is terrifying, strange and bewitching in equal measure and is a novel best read with the light firmly switched on.

Count Collin Van Reenan was born in England but has spent a considerable time in Western Europe, particularly France. Educated both in Paris and in London, he has had an eclectic selection of jobs and has worked as an interpreter, as a labourer, driver, teacher, tour guide, immigration officer and police officer (the Met). Bilingual in French and English, he also speaks some Dutch and Arabic and worked until recently as an official police and court interpreter at Bow Street and the Old Bailey, until increasing deafness and a disliking of political correctness prompted him to retire. In 2012, he inherited his family's French title and is the 5th Count Van Reenan, the earlier counts having left France in 1870 after local accusations of vampirism. Currently sharing his time between a small apartment in Paris and his home in Essex, he continues to pursue his interest in the occult.