The Holm Oaks - P. M. Hubbard

Jake Haddon and wife Elizabeth move into his uncle's home, a surprise inheritance. The house is located on a wooded estate but the forest of Holm Oaks was sold to neighbor Dennis Wainwright. Haddon has access to a right of way through the forest, but Wainwright seems unneighborly about the way Jake and Elizabeth, an avid birdwatcher who has spotted a night heron roosting in the trees, are spending time there.  Contentious relations follow. The problem is exacerbated when Jake begins an odd romance with Carol Wainwright, Dennis' wife. The two have secret trysts in the forest, talk of love, but never do much other than hold hands and embrace. Sex does not occur. Not even kissing! But Dennis senses that something is up between the two.

There follows a sort of symbolic rage expressed through legal battles about the forest and property rights. Wainwright wants to chop down the forest. The Haddons enlist the aid of a forestry council to prevent destruction. Then Wainwright puts up a fence and -- most bizarrely -- introduces some unruly and apparently violent pigs in the woods.  Elizabeth is fatally injured in a brutal encounter with a boar. Jake is certain that Wainwright means to kill his wife or him or both.

The setting, as is usual with Hubbard, is extremely well done.  The forest is imbued with menace. Throughout the entire book all of the Wainwright's actions and some of the Haddon's reactions are tainted with sinister ambiguity. This is Hubbard's hallmark as a suspense writer.  No one is ever really thoroughly good in a Hubbard novel.

Jake is depicted as a furtive man, spying on Dennis and Carol in early chapters, fantasizing about Carol, eventually falling in love with her. But his habit of lurking, eavesdropping and spying is as creepy and unsettling as the way Dennis comes across as a threatening, unfriendly neighbor.  Jake is the narrator and everything is filtered through his eyes so Dennis Wainwright is a villain from the get-go with little room for sympathy.

Late in the novel Elizabeth's sister Stella, a painter, shows up. She senses the house and forest are "not right". All her warnings to leave fall on deaf ears. Her antipathy for the entire area despite its wild beauty and tempting as a subject for her painting lead to an ugly argument.  Elizabeth kicks out her sister.  But Stella returns when all the warring with the Wainwrights leads to a violent death.

Overall, the book is very odd and sadly not one of my favorite Hubbard novels. It all turned out to be unsatisfying for me. The menace and weird spell-like hold the forest has over all the characters dissipates as the story focuses on Jake's infidelity. The whole thing devolves into a soap opera of hatred, jealousy and temporary madness.  There are better Hubbard books out there.