THE HOUNDING . . . Between the covers

For those who believe in geopsychology – the connection between place and the human mind – there is actually a place called Nettlebed. It is in Oxfordshire but not, as in the book, two hamlets, Little and Greater, divided by the River Thames. Given that the story mentions that, in living memory, older people remember the soldiers of the English civil wars, we e connection between Little Nettlebed and Greater Nettlebed is a simple punt ferry, operated by Pete Darling. Perhaps it is stretching things a little far, but the concept of the Ferryman in literature goes back into the mists of time and includes, of course, the mythical Charon, who carries passenger not across the placid upper reaches of the Thames, but a much darker river altogether. On one side of the river is the local ale house, frequented all too often by Pete Darling, and on the other bank, the farm owned by the elderly Joseph Mansfield. His wife is dead. His son and daughter in law are dead. All that remains are his five granddaughters – and his failing sight. Now, he lives as much by scent, touch and memory, as his milky eyes see only vague shapes and shadows.

Among the many joys of this book is the attention paid to the flora and fauna of the villages. My first thought was of the wonderful poem by Matthew Arnold, The Scholar Gypsy, where he writes, also of the Ofordshire landscape:

“Screen’d is this nook o’er the high half reaped field.
And here till sundown, shepherd, will I be.
Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep,
And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see
Pale pink convolvulus in tendrils creep;
And air-swept lindens yield
Their scent and rustle down their perfumed showers
Of bloom on the bent grass where I am laid.”

Xenobe Purvis gives us Agrimony, Figwort, Mignonette, Cow Parsley, Dog Roses, Foxgloves, Buttercups and Camomile. Be not distracted, however. The Nettlebeds are no balmy rural paradise, no Arcadia. We see a brutal rural custom which involves the burial of a woman who has died in childbirth. Local custom decrees that the six pallbearers must be women who are pregnant, as if to warn them that their fertility has consequences. When Ferryman Darling believes he has seen the Mansfield sisters turn themselves into dogs, some dismiss his claim as the imaginings of a drunk but, crucially, some people are only too ready to see this as a perfect explanation for why the five young women are so strange, and so aloof.

There are moments in this unsettling novel where I felt drawn into a Samuel Palmer painting. His England was full of mystery, a place where men and women were merely bystanders in an intense landscape of a setting sun sharing the canvas with a harvest moon, a land where thousand year-old traditions and phantom ancestors have a potent effect on present people.

The Ferryman is, perhaps, the key figure in The Hounding. As the river shrinks to a stream that people can easily wade through, his livelihood withers, and his daylight hours are seen through an alcoholic haze. He is the lightning conductor which seems to channel all the negative energy hovering over the hamlets. He sees – or thinks he sees – the five sisters for what they are:

“The fierce one, the pretty one, the tomboy, the nervous one, the youngest. That was what had frightened him the most: they were not mere doltish dogs. They were girls with teeth and claws.”

The novel ends with death and delusion, and the author, in narrative terms – and perhaps wisely – does not provide a definitive conclusion to the events in Little and Greater Nettlebed, but leaves us with the feeling we have after awaking from a strange and troubling dream. The Hounding is published by Hutchinson Heinemann and will be on sale from 26th June.

June 24, 2025 0

NIGHT AND DAY . . . Between the covers

This is a collection of macabre tales from the creator of PI Charlie Parker, the private investigator from Portland, Maine. As fans of that series will testify, Parker is no stranger to the paranormal and the deadly creatures it allows into the human realm. Here, John Connolly presents a variety of supernatural experiences, ranging from the whimsical, through science fiction to extreme terror.

The Pilgrim’s Progress: A Tale of The Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository

Here, we learn the origin of one of the strangest libraries in the world. Its stock consists solely of first editions of great novels, each of which has been presented to the collection by someone (dressed as, if you are sceptical) one of its characters, shortly after the author’s death. We are in the precincts of Westminster Abbey in the fifteenth century, and in the company of William Caxton and his apprentice Wynkyn de Worde. The building they rent from the monastery contains the printing press that has recently produced the first bound copy of The Canterbury Tales. They are astonished when, one fine day, who should turn up on their doorstep but the Knight, the Miller, the Wife of Bath, the Nun’s Priest and the Summoner? What follows stretches Caxton’s credulity to its limits, and raises the interesting problem that, should he print a version of the New Testament, would it trigger The Second Coming?

And All the Graves of All the Ghosts

In this poignant story, Connolly gives us a perfectly normal family who move into an old house, and soon discover that there is ‘a presence’. In a corner of one of the rooms, it is always cold. There is a mysterious draught and, very soon, a misty shape begins to manifest itself. The shape eventually becomes more solid, and the young woman it resembles is clearly in mortal terror of something she has discovered on the floor at her feet. This phantom causes the family to disintegrate, and the narrator is left, more in tune with the nameless spectre than with his real-life family.

Evenings With Evans

Ghosts and phantoms are meant to be malevolent and spiteful, determined only to avenge wrongs inflicted on them when they were corporeal, they can also be benign. Here, a man is driving his car, his family alongside him, when he instinctively swerves to avoid a fox. The car crashes, fatally injuring his wife, son and daughter. Living alone in the old house they shared, he vows to find – and shoot – the distinctly marked fox that he blames for the death of his family. As his obsession grows ever more fierce, he is distracted by bizarre happenings in his ancient wine cellar. He sees flickering candlelight and, when he investigates, he finds a table set out with a wine glass, and a bottle of his very decent claret. This plays our beautifully, and Connolly suggests to us that death is not the end, and reunion with those we have loved and lost is not impossible.

Abelman’s Line

This a strange one, and no mistake. I had to use the ‘back button’ several times to clarify in my mind what was going on. It is what could be called science fantasy. We have a group of scientists, sometime in the not too distant future. They have devised a device that can warp physical time, and basically create parallel time lines for people they choose as subjects. Perhaps ‘targets’ is a better word, because the physicists are all Jewish. They take Nazi war criminals who are now long dead, but have evaded justice to die in relatively peaceful old age, often somewhere in South America. Put simply, the scientists ‘rewind the tape’ (to use an analogue term) of the Nazis’ lives, and then cause something deeply unpleasant – and terminal – to happen to them before they can pass away in their sleep in, say, a Chilean care home. I have to add the rider that I think that was what was going on. Readers with other ideas, please feel free to get in touch!

The Mire at Fox Tor

Connolly is very much in traditional ghost story mode here. We have the familiar trope of two men dining together, and one has a tale to tell. These fellows only ever have surnames, and they are usually bachelors with a public school or military background. Tenley, is one such, and an austere sort of chap who used to go on long hikes across hills and moors. He had been determined to navigate the dangerous Fox Tor Mire on Dartmoor. I instantly thought of Grimpen Mire in the classic Hound of the Baskervilles, but Fox Tor Mire conceals terrors even worse the Conan Doyle’s spectral dog. As Tenley strides across the morass, stepping from tuft to tuft, a mist descends, and he loses his sense of direction. His compass work has been honed to perfection, but now the needle seems to swing this way and that, leaving him totally disoriented. When a little boy appears out of the miasma, his troubles are only just beginning.

The Bear

This is a whimsical little story which has a deep vein of sadness and an ineffable sense of loss. I think it works as an allegory, rather an account of literal events. We are in Ireland, with a mother and her two young boys. Their father is no longer part of the family, and so the woman and her sons have taken a holiday cottage in North Kerry. While the mother is away shopping, a bear appears. The lovely illustrations by PJ Lynch show that this isn’t a wild beast, but more of a Pooh or Paddington. What happens when the mother returns changes the mood altogether.

The Flaw

This is probably my favourite story in this collection, because it is pure MR James. Did you ever read his tale The Mezzotint? It describes a museum curator who receives a mysterious print, which begins to change, and shows a rather nasty figure bit by bit abducting a child from a house. In Connolly’s version, a man buys a painting of some ancient standing stones. The character, Hayden, has inherited a cottage, and from his bedroom window, he can actually see the stones, known as The Five Good Children. What happens next is deeply disturbing, but I strongly suggest that you buy or borrow the book and find out for yourself.

Unquiet Slumbers

This is as charming a short story as I have ever read, but it is hard not to give the game away with spoilers. We are back in The Caxton Library. Remember, its unique way of sourcing books is that when author dies, a copy of their most famous work is left on the library’s doorstep, usually accompanied by the main character from the book. For no other reason than it is a deeply spiritual place the library has relocated to be in the sacred shadow of Ely Cathedral, with its mighty tower and unique Octagon. The librarian, a Mr Hanna, is peeved that someone has broken a window trying to get in. He repairs it, but when it happens a second time, he is astonished to see that he has a visitor. If I tell you that the year is 1848, and you have an amazing song written by an 18 year-old woman in 1978 running through your head, you might guess the identity of Mr Hanna’s visitor.

Our Friend Carlton

From Victorian Cambridgeshire we move to modern day New Jersey and a trio of crooks. We never learn the narrator’s name, but the other two are Stanhope and Carlton. Carlton has become something of a liability, as in terms of money belonging to some deeply unpleasant people, he has adopted a very loose understanding of the old Latin phrase, meum et teum. So he has to die. The trio go to the depths of Wharton State forest, ostensibly for a leisurely stroll, and Stanhope puts a .22 hollow point into Carlton’s skull, and they bury the corpse. Sadly, that is not the end of the matter.
“Stanhope couldn’t understand why our friend Carlton wouldn’t, or couldn’t, accept that he was dead and do what dead people did, which was stay that way.”

What we have here is a collection of stories written over the years by John Connolly, each commissioned differently, as he explains at the end of the book. Perhaps this explains the dramatic variety in moods, textures and themes of the tales. What is astonishing is that here is a writer skilled enough to shape-shift in style subject matter and tone, without compromising quality. Published by Hodder and Stoughton, Night and Day is available now.

THESE NINE STORIES TAKE UP JUST OVER HALF THE BOOK.
THE FINAL STORY, HORROR EXPRESS, IS NOVELLA LENGTH,
SO I WILL REVIEW IT SEPARATELY.

November 28, 2024 0

THE BURNING . . . Between the covers

The novel starts in London, March 2020 and, like millions of other people, the Mountford family are sitting watching the news, and there is only one item – The Lockdown. Stringent rules about association and movement have been imposed, but Tony Mountford is nothing if not a quick thinker. He and his family are lucky. They own a holiday cottage in the south of England, and he decides on the spur of the moment to pile everyone and everything into the car and head south. They avoid police patrols, and arrive safely at the cottage. Across Britain, and the rest of Europe, a million nightmares are being enacted as the Covid death toll rises, but for the Mountfords, their nightmare is only just beginning.

The cottage, although it has been brought up to date after a fashion, is ancient: it has a resident ghost, or other-worldly presence; when sensed, it has been entirely benign, to the extent that it is mentioned as a selling point in the advertising brochure. Some renters have even placed a ☹️in their Trip Advisor review, disappointed that it never appeared during their stay.

Something, however, has jarred and jolted the spiritual ambience of the old stones out of kilter, and a far more sinister manifestation has claimed the cottage. There is a dramatic moment when, while Tony and his wife Charlie are making love in front of the log burning stove, with the children all sound asleep upstairs, a spectral hand grips Charlie’s throat. Far more chilling, however, is the moment when eight year-old Alfie appears at the foot of the stairs one night and says:

“Daddy, there’s a man in my room.“

Without giving too much away, the Mountfords’ stay at the cottage doesn’t end well, and after a few months the property is back on the market. Gavin and Simon are a fairly wealthy gay couple and they become the new owners. They decide to gut the interior of the building, stripping it right back to beams, brick and stone and – as far as the local council planners will allow – fully modernise it. In the process they make two startling discoveries. They find a deep well beneath the house, but of greater significance is that the builders have unearthed steps leading down to what can only be described as some kind of a cell. It has bars on the door, through which something of the inside can be seen, but the door remains resolutely locked. Robert Derry has a profound understanding of the latent power of old buildings, ghosts or not, and he describes it beautifully:

“After all, the heavy wooden beams were once living breathing things, until some mediaeval carpenters had cut them down in their prime. Then as seasoned joists they’d been hoisted up to hang from finely crafted oak A-frames, each chiselled peg dovetailed into carved sockets like ancient teeth in an angled jawbone. Dead men, whose hands had once lovingly laboured to shape each broad blade that would one day bear a ton or two of hand-hewn reads. The same dead men that now lay their heads further up the lane; a yew lined root that leads to a secluded graveyard which has long since laid its single tracked secrets to rest.”

As Gavin researches the history of what they pair had hoped would be their ‘forever home’, it is clear that in the mid seventeenth century the house witnessed truly evil acts, and that trauma seems to have been absorbed into the very bricks and mortar. Someone – or something – seems trapped, angry and in pain, and will not leave Gavin and Simon in peace until it is freed. This is an excellent account of dark deeds from the past intruding into modern lives, and Robert Derry has written a very convincing and plausible ghost story, with several moments that are genuinely disturbing. The Burning is independently published, and is available now.

June 3, 2024 1

THE INSTRUMENTS OF DARKNESS . . . Between the covers

For those new to the series, Charlie Parker is a private investigator from Portland, Maine. He is haunted by a the past, chiefly the murder of his wife and daughter many years ago. In this, the twenty-second in the series, he is hired by lawyer Moxie Costin to investigate the disappearance of a toddler, Henry Clark. After a blanket soaked in his blood is found in the boot of her car, his mother, Colleen, is suspected of his murder, although no body has been found.

Connolly is a master at sowing seeds of doubt and tension. I can think of only one other writer as capable of subtle suggestions of menace and foreboding, and he – Montague Rhodes James – died in 1936. This is a house in the Maine woods, where we suspect evil lurks:

“Some places discourage curiosity. They trigger an ancient response, one that advises us not to linger, and perhaps not even to mention what we might have discovered. Pretend you will never hear, a voice whispers, and it takes us a moment to realise that it is not our own. Be on your way. If you forget me, I might forget you in turn.”

As the search for Henry takes a disturbing turn, It’s not until page 247 that Parker makes the phone call hardened fans of the series have been waiting for. He calls New York and tells Tony Fulci, “They’re on their way.” ‘They’, of course, being Parker’s long time allies, Angel and Louis. They have a certain effect on people. A woman Parker has been interviewing catches site of Angel and Louis outside a store.
“Are they with you?” Beth asked.
“They’re my associates.”
“They don’t look like private detectives. Don’t take this the wrong way, but they look like criminals. If they came into the store, I’d lie down on the floor with my hands behind my head.”
“Sometimes,”I said, ”that’s precisely the effect we seek.”

One of the joys of reviewing the Charlie Parker series is that one can simply let the author speak for himself. Here are a couple of examples where Connolly is in full Raymond Chandler mode:

“Optimistically, if nothing else, the town also posted two inns. Judging by the pictures on its website, the first promised prison mattresses and food to match, while the second screamed Gay Couple Heading For A Messy Divorce. We picked the latter.”

Parker describes a dingy bar:
“Its interior smelled of dust, urine, and drain cleaner, the floor was permanently littered with fragments of shattered glass and broken dreams, and even the furniture had tattoos.”

With the help of an enigmatic woman called Sabine Drew, who has a kind of second sight, Parker realises little Henry’s disappearance is connected to a strange relationship between his father, and a mysterious woman called Mara Teller. It seems that Teller can shape-shift between a desirable delegate at an upmarket business conference, and an unremarkable woman called Eliza Michaud who lives with her brother and sister in an isolated house deep in the forest near the town of Gretton. By the time Parker and his buddies have made the connection between the Michaud family and Henry’s disappearance, warfare has broken out between the Michauds and a collective of far-right hoodlums who have established a camp on the other side of a creek that divides the properties.

John Connolly combines the Meccano nuts and bolts of putting a crime novel together with a poetry that dazzles. Perhaps you don’t believe in the supernatural, but he takes your disbelief, and shakes it to death like a terrier gripping a rat. No living writer connects us to evil in the same way. This is a deeply scary book. It is published by Hodder & Stoughton and will be out on 7th May

May 1, 2024 0

ON MY SHELF . . . July 2021

I have a healthy To Be Read stack as July swelters its way towards August, as well as some interesting-looking blog tour stops to fulfil.

THE NAMELESS ONES by John Connolly

A new Charlie Parker novel is always one of the significant way-points in my reading year. Centre stage in this latest adventure for the Portland private eye is his loyal – but violent – friend, Louis. Instead of the customary Maine woods or the craggy North Atlantic shoreline, the actions shifts to Amsterdam, where an old friend of Louis’ has been murdered after tangling with Serbian war criminals. Fans of this excellent series will know what to expect – violence, a sense of deep unease that echoes Hamlet’s famous advice to Horatio, and a genuine present day battle between good and evil. The Nameless Ones is published by Hodder and Stoughton, and is available now.

INVITE ME IN BY Emma Curtis

The trope of the seemingly happily married woman with lovely children and and a handsome, supportive husband – but who is hiding a terrible secret – has become very popular in domestic thrillers, but Emma Curtis, in this account of what happens when Eliza Curran takes on a new tenant, gives it fresh legs. Published by Transworld Digital, Invite Me In is out now as a Kindle, and the paperback version will follow in September.

THE DAY OF THE JACKAL by Frederick Forsyth

As the late lamented Sandy Denny once sang, “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?” It was fifty years ago that former RAF pilot and journalist Frederick Forsyth’s political thriller was first published. If you want a copy of the UK first edition, you might need a grand or so to play with, but this 50th anniversary edition from Arrow – with the added bonus of an introduction by Lee Child – is much more reasonable. I won’t waste time and space by outlining the plot (which is still as original and compelling as when it was written) but you can get this paperback here and still have change from a tenner.

A SLOW FIRE BURNING by Paula Hawkins

In the publicity blurbs all the great and the good among contemporary crime fiction jostle to praise Paula Hawkins and her writing. The Zimbabwe-born author certainly hit the big time with her breakout bestseller The Girl on The Train and her second novel Into The Water. Can she make it a hat-trick of triumphs? All the ingredients seem to be there – female centred, tense, anxiety-driven and a complex emotional undertow which threatens to drag the unwary participants away. Three women – Laura, Carla and Miriam – face different challenges that force them to re-evaluate how they calibrate innocence, guilt – and danger. A Slow Fire Burning will be out on 31st August and is published by Transworld Digital

SAFE AT HOME by Lauren North

More domestic angst and tension now from Lauren North, whose debut novel was The Perfect Son (2019). Her latest novel features Anna James, described as “an anxious mother” When she has to leave eleven-year-old Harrie home alone one evening, she can’t stop worrying about her daughter. But nothing bad ever happens in the sleepy village of Barton St Martin. Except something does go wrong that night, and Anna returns to find Harrie with bruises she won’t explain. The next morning a local businessman is reported missing and the village is sparking with gossip. Anna is convinced there’s a connection and that Harrie is in trouble. But how can she protect her daughter if she doesn’t know where the danger is coming from? This is, again, from Transworld Digital and will be out as a Kindle at the beginning of September, and in paperback at the end of that month.

July 24, 2021 0

THE EVIL WITHIN . . . Between the covers

SM Hardy, aka Sue Tingey, has put together a thoroughly enjoyable and, at times, genuinely scary ghost story. The Evil Within tells the tale of Jim Hawkes, a young London banker who has an attack of conscience about the bloodthirsty nature of his trade, and tells his boss to go forth and multiply. This rush of blood to the head is not entirely unconnected to the fact that he is still grieving for his dead sweetheart, who drowned herself after breaking off their engagement in a calamitous row. Jim decides that a physical exit from London is essential, and so he takes out a short term lease on a cottage in England’s West Country.

When he arrives in Devon he finds that the cottage – and its immediate surroundings – have, shall we say, history. The back story involves a dead girl, who was found hanged from the banisters. While exploring the adjacent churchyard, Jim meets the vicar, and is invited in to the rectory for a welcoming chat and a nice cup of tea. All good so far, but when he meets two of the long term residents, widowed Emma and Jed, the local handyman, fixer of lawnmowers and general village sage and factotum, his equilibrium is seriously disturbed when they tell him that the rectory is not only unoccupied, but the reverend gentleman has been dead for some time.

By now, of course, we have to suspend disbelief, because this is going to be a book where weird things are going to happen. There is one key question, as it ever was in ghost stories. Are the strange events actually happening independent from the main character’s perception or, as the title hints at, are they in his mind? SM Hardy certainly gives Jim Hawkes plenty to cope with. We have a Don’t Look Now style figure in a red coat who not only flits in and out of Jim’s peripheral vision, but occasionally holds his hand in her dead, cold fingers. Again with a nod to Daphne du Maurier’s wonderful short story, there are also two sisters, who may possible be sinister as well as spinster. We mustn’t forget a mysterious and hulking man in grey who clearly wishes Jim harm and may – or may not – be an astral projection of a malevolent criminal who lies in a vegetative state at a mysterious local mental hospital.

Clichés only become clichés when they are wearisome, and there is nothing remotely wearisome about The Evil Within. Yes, SM Hardy mines deep into the seam of supernatural fiction and comes up with many recognisable elements, but she welds them together to make a compelling novel. Best of all, even though she deal in familiar tropes – the haunted cottage, the startling face in the window, the conversations with the dead and the events that no-one in the village pub will talk about – we genuinely care about Jim Hawkes and what happens to him. The possibility that Jim’s apparitions may be just the product of his own mental fragility in the wake of his fiancée’s tragic death doesn’t diminish our concern for him, nor prevent us from fearing the worst when events take a disturbing turn.

I have never written a novel, nor could I, but I have read many and I know from experience that if the author doesn’t forge that link between reader and character, the book may as well be cast aside and sent to the charity shop. SM Hardy ticks this box – and many other important ones – and ensures that The Evil Within is both entertaining, credible and enthralling – with a sharp sting in the very tip of its tail. It is published by Allison & Busby and is available now.

Click on the image below for a short but spooky video

March 23, 2020 0

BURY THEM DEEP . . .Between the covers

ames Oswald’s Edinburgh copper Tony McLean is something of a fixture in the crime fiction firmament these days, and Bury Them Deep is the tenth in the series. For those readers picking up one of his cases for the first time, a little of his back story might be helpful. He is based in Edinburgh and now, of course, works for Police Scotland. He was (unhappily) educated in English independent schools thanks to his wealthy family, some of whose riches he has inherited, thus making him ‘a man of means’. He lives in an old and impossibly roomy house, left to him by his grandmother. He has a fragile relationship with partner Emma, and it is fair to say that their life together has been punctuated by both drama and tragedy. McLean drives a very plush Alfa Romeo, enjoys an occasional glass of cask-strength single malt whisky and, aside from his instinct for police work, has been known to be susceptible to stimuli and influences that are not, as Hamlet remarked, “dreamt of in your philosophy.” After many successful cases, he is now Detective Chief Inspector McLean, but if his superiors imagine he will settle for a life behind a desk, they are very much mistaken.

Anya Renfrew is a rather dowdy and dull police civilian worker who seems devoted to her job, which is mastering the many databases which keep investigations fed with information. She has never had a day off in her life, and so when she goes missing it is considered rather unusual. Her mother is a former – and legendary – police superintendent, but Grace Ramsay is now old and infirm, living in a care home. Police are never more active than when investigating actual or possible harm to one of their own, and when McLean searches Anya’s house, what he finds hidden in her wardrobe indicates that Ms Renfrew’s private life was more exotic – and dangerous – than colleagues might have imagined.

A chance bit of tomfoolery by two schoolboys, bored out of their minds during the long hot summer holiday, leads not only to the discovery of Anya Renfrew’s car, but a moorland wildfire of tinder-dry heather. When the fire service manage to douse the flames, they make a disturbing discovery. Bones. Human bones. Bones that the post-mortem investigation reveals have been deliberately stripped of their flesh.

cLean’s professional life already has one big complication. A five-times serial killer called Norman Bale is in a secure mental hospital, thanks to McLean’s diligence and bravery. Now, he asks to speak to McLean, and what he has to say is both shocking and improbable. Are his words just the ramblings of a psychological disturbed killer, or does his suggestion – that Anya Renfrew’s disappearance and the moorland bone-pit are linked to a sinister piece of folklore – have any substance?

t takes a bloody good writer to mix crime investigation with touches of the supernatural. John Connolly, with his Charlie Parker books is one such, but James Oswald (right) makes it work equally as well. The finale of this novel is as deeply frightening as anything I have read for a long time. Despite the drama, Oswald can use a lighter touch on occasions. There is dark humour in the way McLean sometimes needs to ingratiate himself with Edinburgh’s smart set. At an art gallery opening night he listens politely as two guests discuss one of the objets d’art:

“Fascinating how she blends the surreal and the horrific in a melange of sensual brushwork, don’t you think?”
“It all seems a bit brutal to me. The darkness crushes your soul, sucks it in, and you become one with the oils.”
Definitely Tranent, by way of the Glasgow School of Art department of pseudo-intellectualism. He’s been just as much of a twat at that age of course; in his case a student trying to impress with his rather flawed knowledge of basic psychology…”

Bury Them Deep is published by Wildfire (an imprint of Headline Publishing) and will be available on 20th February.

For reviews of other books by James Oswald click the link

February 11, 2020 0

A BOOK OF BONES . . . Between the covers

In the previous Charlie Parker novel, The Woman In The Woods, John Connolly introduced us to a frightful criminal predator, Quayle, and his malodorous and murderous familiar, Pallida Mors. Even those with the faintest acquaintance with Latin will have some understanding what her name means and, goodness gracious, does she ever live up to it! Both Quayle and Mors are seeking the final pages of a satanic book, The Fractured Atlas which, when complete, will deliver the earth – and all that is in it – to the forces of evil.

Unusually for a Charlie Parker novel, most of the action takes place far from our man’s home in Portland, Maine. Parker and his customary partners Louis and Angel travel to England via the Netherlands for what may well be the final encounter with their adversaries. All is not well, however. The implacable Louis is still wounded – physically and mentally – after a previous encounter with Pallida Mors, and Angel is undergoing chemotherapy after having a significant part of his intestines removed. There is something of Tennyson’s Ulysses about Parker, Louis and Angel in this epic encounter:

Charlie Parker aficionados will remember that in The Wolf In Winter (2014) Parker tangled with the sinister residents of a tiny village called Prosperous. They were descendants of The Familists, a pagan cult which had originated in northern England but then emigrated to America, taking the stones of their church with them in their ships. The original village, high up on the lonely moors of Northumberland is now little more than a series of ruined cottages, but it comes into dramatic focus when the body of a young schoolteacher is found with a ring of Muslim prayer beads lodged in her slashed throat.

A Book of Bones is a tour de force, shot through with the grim poetry of death and suffering. Connolly (right) takes the creaky genre of horror fiction, slaps it round the face and makes it wake up, shape up and step up. He might feel that the soubriquet literary is the kiss of death for a popular novelist, but such is his scholarship, awareness of history and sensitivity that I throw the word out there in sheer admiration. Jostling each other for attention on Connolly’s stage, amid the carnage, are the unspeakably vile emissaries of evil, the petty criminals, the corrupt lawyers and the crooked cops. Charlie Parker may be haunted; you may gaze into his eyes and see a soul in ruins; his energy and motivation might be fueled by a desire to lash out at those who murdered his wife and daughter; what shines through the gloom, however, is the tiny but fiercely bright light of honesty and goodness which makes him the most memorable hero of contemporary fiction.

Astonishingly, it is twenty years since Every Dead Thing introduced Charlie Parker to the world. Seventeen books later, A Book Of Bones will be published by Hodder & Stoughton on 18^th April.

For more on Charlie Parker at Fully Booked, click the image below.

April 15, 2019 0

THE POSTMAN DELIVERS . . . A Book of Bones

I would be lying if I said I hadn’t been counting the days until this arrived. Kerry Hood at Hodder & Stoughton is to be commended for showing great patience in the face of my impatience, but it finally arrived. Kerry had mentioned that it might be something special, but then publicists always say that, don’t they? So, ripping off the sturdy cardboard wrapper ….

Ta-da! And there it was, the long awaited latest journey into the darkness of men and angels for the Maine PI, Charlie Parker. The adjectives are easy – haunted, conflicted, convincing, troubled, angry, brave … fans of the series can play their own ‘describe Charlie Parker’ game, but most importantly, our man is back.

Charlie Parker is back, and how! I was advised that I might want to set aside a fair amount of time to read A Book of Bones but, blimey, Kerry was not wrong. At a little short of 700 pages, and weighing nearly 2lbs in old money, the book is certainly a big ‘un. New readers shouldn’t be daunted, though. John Connolly couldn’t write a dull sentence even if he went off to his Alma Mater, Trinity College Dublin, to do a doctorate in dullness.

But there was more! Book publicists are an inventive lot, and over the years I’ve had packets of sweets, tiny vials of perfume, books wrapped in funereal paper and black ribbon, facsimiles of detective case files – but never a jigsaw. Wrapped up in a cellophane packet with a lovely Charlie Parker 20 year anniversary graphic were the pieces.

As I was always told to do by my old mum, I isolated the bits with the straight edges first. There was clearly a written message in there, set against the lovely – but sinister – stained glass background. Confession time; although the puzzle didn’t have too many pieces, I got stuck. Fortunately, Mrs P was taking a very rare day off work with a flu bug, and as she is a jigsaw ace, she finished it off for me.

So the publicity is brilliant. but what about the book? Parker could never be described as having a comfort zone, but over the last two decades he had been battling the bad guys on his home ground – usually the forests and shores of Maine. A Book of Bones sees him on unfamiliar territory, but heading for a winner-takes-all struggle with his adversaries Quale and Pallida Mors. They have chosen the battlefield, and it is the windswept and haunted moors of northern England. Quale and Mors are close to achieving a lifetime ambition – to reassemble the pages of The Fractured Atlas, a book which, when complete, spells death and a spiritual apocalypse. Parker is older, slower, and weakened by his battles with the killer angels, but this time, he is playing for keeps. A Book of Bones will be on sale from 18th April 2019.

The last inclusion in this delightful package from Hodder & Stoughton was a lovely postcard from the man himself, John Connolly. If you click on the image, you can read more about the author and his most memorable creation.