Paul Finch's Blog, page 16

Action girls - guts, guile and getting lucky!

We’re talking action-girls this week, with particular focus on my new thriller and policewoman novel - STRANGERS - but we’re going to extend this theme to my weekly book review as well. 

THE MURDER HOUSE by James Patterson is a rather neat tale of female sleuthery, but a good yarn in its own right. I review it towards the end of this column, and if you want to get onto that right now, feel free to scroll down straight away.
However, for those with more time on their hands, you may be interested in a few of my personal views when it comes to pitching members of the fair sex into the gritty mayhem of modern day crime fighting - and that’s up next. 
My crime novels are generally known for the exploits for DS Mark Heckenburg, a ‘head down and straight into the fray’ kind of male cop, whose very last consideration is usually his own safety. As one reviewer rather uncharitably put it, Heck won’t go through a door if he can jump through a window instead. There are plenty of elaborate action set-pieces in the Heck novels, and for that I make no apologies, as my readers seem to like them. But when I devised this new character, Detective Constable Lucy Clayburn - the star of STRANGERS , and hopefully many more books to come - I thought I’d adopt a slightly different tone.

Don’t get me wrong. There is always going to be action in the Clayburn books. All my cop characters walk a tightrope through a world of violent crime. They can be affable and intelligent, yes, but they’re also dealing with vicious, verminous opponents who often only understand one language.
So it was never part of the plan that Lucy would adopt the gentle touch, or be a pacifist. Okay, she inhabits a different world from Heck. This is not Scotland Yard, and she has no remit to cover the whole of England and Wales. So there’ll be no racing from one end of the country to the next. Lucy - though a blue-collar lass, streetwise, tireless and very self-sufficient - lives in a place that is much more local, much more ‘kitchen sink’.
Her beat is Crowley, Greater Manchester’s infamous November Division, an old mill district of the city, which is now depressed, run-down, heavily unemployed, suffers a wide range of social ills, and is naturally a den of criminals who like nothing better than to prey on their own people.
So Lucy’s adventures were always going to have a darker edge to them than the norm, and a much grimier aura. But I’ll say it again in case anyone missed it the first time - this does NOT mean there isn’t going to be action.
It’s just action of - dare I say it - a slightly more realistic order.
The action-girl character is nothing new, of course. I grew up entranced by Diana Rigg’s uber-cool portrayal of Mrs Peel in the The Avengers (65/68), and fell in love at a very early stage with Angie Dickinson as Detective Pepper Anderson (right) in the ground-breaking NBC series Police Woman (74/78), one of the first TV shows ever to follow the day-to-day investigations of a tough-talking, hip-swinging lady cop.
The latter of course, is probably more relevant to the thinking behind Lucy Clayburn, because it was determinedly part of the real world. In modern times, the female action hero, much like the male action hero, is basically invulnerable. In Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013), the fabulous Gemma Arterton (one of my favourite female stars) played a leather-clad female bounty hunter who was the deadliest creature you’d ever encountered; in Salt (2010), CIA operative Angelina Jolie effortlessly saw off wave after wave of enemy agents.
Such improbable scorecard victories are reminiscent of the massacres inflicted on the underworld by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone back in the 1980s - and though great fun at the time, belong primarily in the world of fantasy.
There has to be some jeopardy to get me interested. There has to be a considerable risk factor, and let’s face it - if we’re talking reality, that risk will be always be higher if the hero is female because it’ll always be a tougher ask of a woman, no matter how well trained she is, to take down a terrorist killer or a brutal armed robber with her bare hands.
So from the very beginning, when I was creating Lucy Clayburn, all I could think was: Don’t try selling them Wonderwoman or Batgirl. Those lasses are too slick, too sexy, too perfect, too invincible. Where’s the threat to them? Where are the ordinary difficulties that hamper so many of our everyday lives? For me, it’s much more of a challenge - and therefore much, much more of a buzz - if my female action hero gets tired as she chases some hoodlum through the urban backstreets, and/or is likely to get hurt if he suddenly rounds on her. Oh, Lucy can ‘go a bit’ as they used to say in my hometown of Wigan - she comes from a rough, tough background - but she’s no Amazon Queen; she wins her fights through a combination of guts, guile and getting lucky. And she picks up plenty of bruises in the process.
Sorry if it sounds like I’m getting carried away. I wouldn’t be so pompous as to say that this is a new kind of action hero. We’ve had lots of tough girl cops in the past, but this is my first - and I can’t help but be very, very excited about it.
(She’s also going to be up against some very nasty female villains too: not just a female serial killer, but gangsters, whorehouse madams, the lot - whether for good or ill, the girls definitely have it in STRANGERS, which hits the bookshops, both online and on the high street, on September 22).
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THRILLERS, CHILLERS, SHOCKERS AND KILLERS ...
An ongoing series of reviews of dark fiction (crime, thriller and horror novels) – both old and new – that I have recently read and enjoyed. I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum; there will certainly be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail, but by the definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these books in more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I particularly enjoyed … so I guess if you’d rather not know anything at all about these pieces of work in advance of reading them yourself, then these particular posts will not be your thing.
THE MURDER HOUSE  
by James Patterson and David Ellis (2015)
7, Ocean Drive is a seafront mansion in a wealthy neighbourhood of the Hamptons, Long Island. In appearance, it is a gorgeous ‘olde worlde’ residence with a white sand beach out front and extensive wooded grounds to the rear. It’s a holiday idyll; East Coast America doesn’t get more upscale than this. There is one problem, though – and not a small one. 7, Ocean Drive is also a shunned and abandoned ruin, known locally as ‘the Murder House’ due to it once having sheltered the deranged Dahlquist family, who, generation after generation, terrorised the district with their depraved and homicidal ways. The Dahlquists are now extinct, but their shadow lingers – even in recent years, unsolved violent crimes have been associated with 7, Ocean Drive and its overgrown environs.
It certainly exerts a strange fascination on one-time resident Detective Jenna Murphy (not to mention causes her several inexplicable nightmares and panic attacks) … only for it then to become the epicentre of a full blown investigation when a brand-new double-slaying occurs there, the two victims – a local playboy and his girlfriend – suffering impalement and torture before death.
Murphy, a streetwise cop from New York City, who has returned home to Long Island after giving evidence against corrupt colleagues back in Manhattan, gets stuck in hard, but is beaten to the prize by her uncle, Chief Langdon James (who gave her this job in the first place), when he arrests and convicts handsome handyman and inveterate womaniser, Noah Walker. Noah’s ex-partner is one of the vics, so it seems like a straightforward case. But of course this is James Patterson country, and all manner of twists and turns now follow.
Walker is found to have been framed, and is subsequently released from jail – but Murphy still isn’t sure about his innocence; then there are more ghastly murders, Chief James himself impaled on a heated spit. It starts to look as if a serial killer is at large – but aside from the signature impalements, the pattern is not clear, the victims differing widely. Links are then made with a horrendous high-school shooting of many years earlier, but the evidence in that case appears to point every which way. And all the while, the house, even though it is empty, seems to lie at the heart of everything, like a grotesque spider in the centre of its web.
Eventually, and perhaps inevitably, Murphy herself comes under scrutiny. Bewilderingly, she is implicated by the forensics, though she has had difficulty from the start with new police chief Isaac Marks – a cop she neither rates nor likes, and to a degree, someone she also harbours suspicions about.
It doesn’t help, of course, that Murphy has only the vaguest recollection of the childhood she spent here, but the panic attacks increasingly seem to indicate that something terrible happened to her, something that may well connect her to these hideous crimes, both the old ones and the new ones – and it is this uncertainty that drives her on relentlessly, even when she is suspended or wanted for questioning. In due course, her very liberty will depend on her discovering the truth behind these murders, because the evidence stacking against her is literally mountainous …  
Though it starts off in near-slasher territory, everything occurring around a ghoulish old house wherein a family of demented murderers once dwelt, this long and complex tale quickly transforms into a vintage James Patterson mystery. A sizeable cast of characters (including oddball loser Aiden Willis and debonair restaurant owner Justin Rivers), many of them likely suspects themselves, provide the backdrop to Jenna Murphy’s investigation, which proceeds in fits and starts as she makes and breaks alliances in her desperation to crack the case, as curve-ball after curve-ball is thrown at her, as she eventually loses track of who she can and can’t trust.
Though a lengthy book (over 100 chapters!), it is a concise and easy read, and an absorbing plotline. The heroine herself is very likeable: tough enough to be a cop but vulnerable too, struggling to come to terms with the bad things in her life – and when the odds are against her, you really feel it; the threat of life imprisonment hangs over the second half of this book like a black cloud. I wasn’t totally sold on every aspect of the novel. The romantic elements felt a tad forced given the awful events unfolding, and the big reveal at the end wasn’t a complete surprise (though that is what you get when red herrings abound – you always end up analysing each one of them in detail). But all in all, this was a fast and enjoyable romp. Definitely more of a thriller than a police procedural, with a few Hitchockian psychological touches en route, and several big dollops of whodunit.
As usual – purely for laughs, of course – here are my picks for who should play the leads if Murder House ever makes it to the movie or TV screen (which has to be likely at some point, given Mr. Patterson’s near-constant occupation of the best-seller lists).
Detective Jenna Murphy – Scarlett JohanssonNoah Walker – Matthew McConaugheyChief Langdon James – Ray Liotta Aiden Willis – Walton GogginsJustin Rivers – Simon BakerChief Isaac Marks – Casper Van Dien

Dead men walk again in the mountain mist

There are a few bits and bobs to report today. I'm also happy to include my detailed review of Mark Mills's fantastic wartime murder mystery, THE INFORMATION OFFICER, which as usual can be found towards the lower end of this post. Be my guest and shoot on down there if you wish, but for those who've got a bit more time on their hands ... the main news of the week is that DEAD MAN WALKING, my serial killer novel of 2014, is available now on e-download at the reduced price of 99p (and will remain so until July 11).

For those who don't remember it, or those who are tuning into this column for the first time,  DEAD MAN WALKING  was the fourth novel in my DS Heckenburg series and is set entirely in the British Lake District during a freezing and foggy winter (check the image above for a taste of what that actually means). It sees Heck and Gemma, his ex-girlfriend now turned boss, more or less marooned in a high mountain village, which appears to be the epicentre of a deranged killing spree, the unknown assailant crossing the fells and rivers and forests from one isolated farm or settlement to the next, hacking and shooting his random victims to death and gouging out their eyes in the process.
Here's a quick extract to whet your whistles:

As with most of the other vehicles, the car’s tyres looked as if they’d been repeatedly sliced, reducing them to ribbons, negating any possibility it could be driven anywhere.Up close, Heck noticed that the front passenger window had been powered down. Someone had probably appeared on the verge, waving to the vehicle as it had cruised through the fog. It had braked alongside them. Down went the panel as those inside sought an explanation. Bang bang bang went the assassin’s gun.Heck stuck his head inside.
     It was another abattoir, blood and brain spatter streaking the dashboard, the upholstery, the insides of all the windows, even the ceiling. The officer in the passenger seat, a youngish burly guy with a shaven head, had taken one in the left temple and one in the throat. The officer behind the wheel looked about the same age, but was slimmer; his face was unrecognisable because most of it had been blown away. There was one other officer in the back, an older man with a mop of iron-grey hair. He’d taken one in the forehead and one through the cheek ...
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In other thriller news this week, I was very honoured to be invited to attend the Big Book Bonanza event at the Black Dog Ballroom in Manchester (part of the HarperCollins annual book showcase), where in company with Jo Cannon (the only other author present), I was introduced by my publishers, Avon, to a whole range of Waterstone's folk from all across the Northwest, with whom we socialised, gossiped, drank and generally discussed our work. Also available at the venue was a mountainous pile of uncorrected proofs for STRANGERS , my next police thriller, which is actually published in September - so I'm delighted to be able to report that my book-signing arm was pretty tired by the end of the evening.
STRANGERS  is a bit of a deviation for me in that I move away from the Serial Crimes Unit at Scotland Yard, Heck's home base, to the junior ranks of the CID up in Manchester, where a young female cop, Lucy Clayburn, is trying to find her feet in the quest to capture 'Jill the Ripper', a female lunatic who targets and then sexually mutilates and murders men.

Isn't this a bit of a reverse to the norm?, I hear you ask.

Yes, certainly, and well ... why not? One of the most contentious issues in crime thrillers today, particularly those focussing on sexual or serial homicide, tends to be the preponderance of female victims. This reflects real life of course, tragically. Most of the world's real-life sadistic killers appear to be men, and most of the innocents they butcher are women. It's a hideous trend but one that doesn't  necessarily need to be reflected in fiction. 
So in  STRANGERS  I've tried to buck it. Here's a quick excerpt:

Lucy went left, turning a corner into open space. Nothing stirred in the inky blackness in front of her. Instinctively, she reached for the phone in her pocket, to switch its light on, only to remember that it was in the pocket of the other coat. Not that she was completely blinded; after so long at the bottom of Dedman Delph, her eyes were readjusting quickly. She spied a row of broken windows further to her left, all covered in wire netting. It gave sufficient illumination to show a floor strewn with boxes and piles of old newspapers, and what looked like masses of wood and timber piled against the walls.
     Still there was no movement, neither from Nehwal nor anyone hiding out in here. Even so, Lucy only shuffled forward with caution. ‘Ma’am?
     There was no reply. Until a fierce red light seared through the windows, a loud series of rat-a-tat bangs accompanying it.
      More fireworks … but even so Lucy froze.
     In that fleeting instant, she’d seen a figure standing in a corner.
     Indistinct but tall – taller than she was – and wearing dark clothing, including some kind of hat pulled partly down over its face. It stood very still between an old wardrobe and an upright roll of carpet.
     Lucy pivoted slowly towards it. As the firework flashes diminished again, only its outline remained visible – its outline and its face, which, though it was partially concealed, glinted palely, and, she now saw, was garish in the extreme; grotesquely made-up with bright slashes of what in proper lighting would no doubt be lurid colour ...


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In other news this week, non-crime-related on this occasion (we're strictly into the realms of the weird and surreal with this one!) I was very flattered to be asked to supply a story to top fantasy author Storm Constantine's DARK IN THE DAY anthology.

To quote Storm herself:

"We're used to weird dreams but what about the wide-awake weird? This collection celebrates evocative tales of oddness that span the genres of magic realism, the supernatural, the fantastical and the speculative ..."

I'm in some truly great company in here, as you can see from the list of august names on the cover. My own contribution is a story called WICKEN FEN, which concerns an ill-fated barge trip into the Cambridgeshire fens on a very hot and eerily quiet summer's day.

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THRILLER, CHILLERS, SHOCKERS AND KILLERS ...
An ongoing series of reviews of dark fiction (crime, thriller and horror novels) – both old and new – that I have recently read and enjoyed. I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum; there will certainly be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail, but by the definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these books in more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I particularly enjoyed … so I guess if you’d rather not know anything at all about these pieces of work in advance of reading them yourself, then these particular posts will not be your thing.
THE INFORMATION OFFICER  by Mark Mills (2009)
Malta was no place to be in the summer of 1942.
A British-held strategic fortress in the middle of the Mediterranean, it maintained a vital link between the Allied base at Gibraltar and the Eighth Army in North Africa, for which reason it was hammered by Axis planes, wave after wave carpet-bombing the island indiscriminately, not just killing and maiming members of the garrison, but making life a misery for the natives, filling their graveyards with fresh corpses, their hospitals with casualties and laying waste to their homes and businesses.
This is the remarkable and tumultuous backdrop to Mark Mills's fascinting crime thriller,  The Information Officer . It is also one hell of a headache for the book’s main hero, Major Max Chadwick … because Max is quite literally the British authority in Malta’s ‘Information Officer’, aka propaganda chief. He it is who, on a daily basis, must minimise the bad news and find and exaggerate the good, not just to boost the morale of the beleaguered British forces, but to try and keep the islanders onside. This isn’t Malta’s war, after all. Why should the Maltese support the British in this terrible, apocalyptic fight which was never of their making and for which they are now paying such an appalling price?
As you can imagine, Max’s job is a difficult one at the best of times, but it gets a whole lot harder when British doctor, Freddie Lambert, confides in him that he thinks there may be a serial killer of prostitutes on the island, and more worrying still, that it could be a British submariner. Max is stunned, but the facts speak for themselves: it seems that three Maltese hostesses catering to British forces have been found raped and murdered, their deaths disguised as bombing fatalities – and that one of them was clutching a tell-tale military lapel when discovered.
The implications of this are so terrifying – namely that on the eve of a possible German invasion, it could turn the Maltese against the British, which might lead to a complete collapse of Allied operations in the Mediterranean – that the governor’s main priority is to keep the whole thing under wraps. But Max, egged on by Lilian, a feisty Anglo/Maltese girl who edits one of the local newspapers, undertakes to investigate himself.
What follows is a death-defying game of cat and mouse played out among blazing ruins and raining bombs, Max increasingly coming to suspect that not only may the killer be a Nazi agent trying to set the British and Maltese apart, but possibly a double-agent too. Suddenly, he doesn’t know who to trust; the comfy world of the British officer corps no longer feels familiar. Max even suspects that he himself may be in danger, but the die is now cast, and this affable if rather louche young man, finally determined to do something honourable for the war effort, persists in trying to muddle his way to an answer. At the same time, he must navigate the tricky waters of adultery, because, very ill-advisedly, he is currently the lover of Mitzi, a sad but brave Englishwoman who spends every day writing letters of condolence to the sweethearts of airmen recently killed, and yet who is trapped in a loveless marriage herself. Of course, this complex situation is only made a hundred times worse when Max uncovers evidence that may implicate Mitzi’s husband …
The Information Officer is a many-headed beast: serial killer mystery, wartime adventure and espionage thriller all rolled into one, with a big dollop of romance mixed in.
It is also, to use some period terminology, a corking read.
To start with, it benefits from an immense historicity, painting an incredibly evocative picture of life on Malta during those hellish days, juxtaposing the sun-burnished ‘olde worlde’ architecture, the dusty hills and azure Mediterranean seascapes with an endless carnage of burned buildings, heaped corpses and severed limbs – and yet it goes much further even than this into the realms of mind-boggling authenticity. From the outset here, we are steeped in the officer class, a world of clubs, barracks, bunkers and cocktail evenings, all crammed with stiff upper-lip types, not to mention their dutiful wives, who, in the time-honoured fashion of Britain’s colonies, are also spirited, sensual and occasionally wayward. Moments of war-induced craziness abound, drinks parties and love-making sessions going uninterrupted by colossal air raids, some of the chaps practicing their golf swings by lofting high shots at the German fighters cruising low overhead, Max himself roaring around the island and its many craters on a clapped-out motorbike that he cobbled together from the charred and broken parts of lots of others (and finally, inevitably, coming a cropper on it) – and yet all of this stands in sharp, shameful contrast to the empty shops and endless misery of the local people, to the deep, sweaty shelters where the innocent Maltese hide petrified from the endless aerial onslaught.
Some reviewers, those only looking for a crime thriller, have expressed irritation at this constant intrusion into the narrative by World War Two, but I strongly disagree with them, firstly on the basis that this intense wartime atmosphere is so vivid as to be almost intoxicating, but also because such complaints totally miss the point about the possible insurrection this series of heinous murders might ignite. Surely no stakes in a psycho killer story have ever been as high as these?
Meanwhile, in the midst of the chaos, Max Chadwick makes an unlikely and yet likeable hero. An affable young man, though pretty ordinary in many ways, promoted to his position through family connections, he’s never been completely prepared for the daily difficulties of his role, through in that ‘band of brothers’ fashion he manages to keep it together sufficiently to get through. In terms of the other characters, Freddie Lambert, his closest friend, is a different kettle of fish; cut from the same cloth, but a hard-headed customer who remains completely focussed on his own task, which is to patch up the shattered bodies of friend and foe alike, and occasionally taking time out to forensically assess the murder victims. Then we have Elliot, another key player in the drama, an American officer who for various reasons is currently stationed on Malta, but who is much more than a standard wise-cracker – there are many mysterious depths to Max’s US buddy. 

It would be wrong to sign off without mentioning the ladies, though here, I think, lies the only weak link in The Information Officer . Both Lilian and Mitzi, while strong and beautiful, are somewhat underused, though to be fair that is often because we see so much of the action from Max’s own viewpoint (or from the killer’s, who of course is never named until the grand finale) – though this does seem to weaken them a little, Lilian understandably humourless as she witnesses the annihilation of her countrymen, Mitzi whose status as permanently unhappy wife leaves her in a kind of Limbo.
But these are only small criticisms. The Information Officer is one terrific thriller, totally engrossing as a mystery and hair-raising in its depictions of wartime terror and destruction, not to mention in the depredations of Malta’s very own Ripper – and on top of that it all ends with one of the best twists it’s ever been my experience to encounter on the written page.
I consider myself an expert, and I never even saw it coming. 
As always – purely for fun, you understand – here are my picks for who should play the leads if The Information Officer ever makes it to the movie or TV screen (and this one is absolutely begging for it):
Max – Tom HiddlestonLilian – Valentina LodoviniFreddie – Benedict CumberbatchElliot – Robert Downey JnrMitzi – Kelly Reilly

(Thanks to Pixabay Free Images for the shot at the top).

Massive names sign as the War Wolf howls

It’s all about the lupine this week, as we focus our thoughts on those fearsome wolfish things that prowl the benighted woods and moors on two legs, often in the glare of an icy full moon, snarling and slashing and snapping and biting, and tearing anyone they encounter to gory shreds for no more reason than the demonic rage that possesses them drives them to do it …
Sorry if that seems like an OTT intro, but I’ve got some exciting news on the movie-making front (and what a rarity that is these days!), as WAR WOLF, my medieval action/horror screenplay suddenly starts moving towards preproduction, with big budget movie maestro SIMON WEST slated to direct.
On a conveniently similar subject, I also cast my eye this week over one of the great werewolf novels of our time, Whitley Strieber’s THE WOLFEN , which first hit the shelves way back in 1978 (as a teen horror buff  back in those days, I remember buying it on the very day it appeared in our local bookshop, which kind of places me in history … I think).
As usual, that review can be found at the lower end of this post. Feel free to get straight down there now and check it out if you wish. But if you’re as interested in ‘movie werewolves’ as you are in ‘novel werewolves’, then you might want to read the next few paragraphs first as I'm now in a position to fully update you all on  WAR WOLF  and to lay bare all these meaty new developments I've so tantalisingly hinted at before.
In concept,  WAR WOLF  started life as an original horror movie idea, which I first pitched way back in 2013 to top production company, AMBER ENTERTAINMENT .
The idea sprang from my fascination with medieval history and my lifelong love affair with ancient European legends. Throughout my writing life, I’ve enjoyed merging the real with the unreal. That hasn’t particularly applied to my crime writing, but when it’s come to fantasy and horror I’ve found it the perfect vehicle. There is truly nothing I enjoy more than invoking one of those tumultuous events in western history (in The Gods of Green And Grey it was the Roman Conquest of Britain, in Sparrowhawk the massacre of British troops in 19th century Afghanistan and the subsequent penning of a great Victorian novel) and then dovetailing it all with weird and mythical horror.
In this regard, the Hundred Years War was something I'd always fancied having a bash at.
Waged between the kingdoms of England and France between 1337 and 1453, this was an incredibly bitter and prolonged conflict, which saw five generations of kings on either side of the English Channel fight furiously for control of the French Crown. A series of horrendous battles, apocalyptic sieges and protracted campaigns responsible for the destruction of numberless towns, villages, vineyards and harvests, went on to cost an estimated 3.5 million lives (and remember, this was with axes, swords, spears and arrows, not modern mechanised weaponry, so in terms of pure carnage it was unimaginably up close and personal).
This was truly the conflict to end them all, one of the very bloodiest of the Middle Ages, but it struck me that I could make it even bloodier if I factored in the medieval French legend of the Loup Garou, a man/wolf hybrid created either by sorcery or a curse, which though it most likely had passed into Frankish folklore from Scandinavian mythology via the Viking invasions of the Dark Ages (Berserkers and all that!), would soon become archetypally French and the prototype for all werewolf tales to follow (not to mention the cause of a good number of real-life werewolf trials – France had vastly more than any other European country, most of which resulted in burnings at the stake or breakings on the wheel!).
Anyway, enough with the history lesson. I’m sure most of you already have a pretty good handle on where werewolves come from. And this may possibly explain why my pitch found such a positive response.
At first I'd thought it the longest shot conceivable. Imagine offering a modern day movie house a period piece (and I mean a realperiod piece, with armour and castles and a cast of thousands!), which would be prohibitively expensive in its own right! And then imagine adding lots and lots of werewolves, with all those costly fur and blood effects! But what I maybe hadn’t accounted for was the new age of high fantasy we are currently living in – Lord of the Ringsreally kicking things off on the big screen of course, and Game of Thrones continuing the good fight on TV (not to mention the huge interest generated by games: The Elder Scrolls - Skyrim, Witcher 3 - Wild Hunt, Dragon Age - Inquisiton and the like).
All of a sudden these kinds of projects are HOT.
I should add that this is only my theory for the reason  WAR WOLF  received the immediate thumbs-up, though I think there’s something in it. Suffice to say I was very surprised by the response – delighted, but still surprised.
AMBER , who are nothing if not an ambitious and forward-thinking media company, subsequently commissioned a script from me. I got stuck into it, and though it went through several drafts, as is always the way these days, and another top writer of my acquaintance, ANDY BRIGGS , was brought on board to assist (as is also the way in the modern movies), we gradually made progress until we finally reached the stage early last month when ace Hollywood director  SIMON WEST  (who's been responsible for such hits as Con Air, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and The Expendables 2) took the helm, while make-up experts DAVE AND LOU ELSEY also signed up (their roster of spectacular successes includes Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Where the Wild Things Are and X Men: First Class).
What we have now is a planned franchise of ‘War Wolf’ movies scheduled for production through a partnership of  AMBER , FORTITUDE INTERNATIONAL and  SIMON WEST , with the first installment set for a November shoot in Italy.
Now, I must admit that I’ve been in this heady position in the past. I’ve penned many movies over the years, only two of which have ever made it to the screen – THE DEVIL’S ROCK (2011) and SPIRIT TRAP (2005) – and while several of the others have reached the stage where they were apparently only weeks from preproduction, the chances of anything really happening still felt slim, before, somewhat predictably, they began to fade (fewer and fewer phone-calls, fewer and fewer invitations to lunch, etc) until the whole thing had whispered away like smoke.
But this is distinctly NOT the feeling I have on this occasion.
I doubt I’ve ever been involved with a movie project to which as much A-list talent was so enthusiastically attached. It feels good, folks, I mean really good. So you’ve simply got to keep watching THIS space.
The ‘Wolf of War’ could be howling very, very soon. 



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THRILLERS, CHILLERS, SHOCKERS AND KILLERS ...
An ongoing series of reviews of dark fiction (crime, thriller and horror novels) – both old and new – that I have recently read and enjoyed. I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum; there will certainly be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail, but by the definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these books in more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I particularly enjoyed … so I guess if you’d rather not know anything at all about these pieces of work in advance of reading them yourself, then these particular posts will not be your thing.

THE WOLFEN  
by Whitley Strieber (1978)
When two beat-cops are murdered in a Brooklyn scrapyard, ‘fire and water’ detectives Becky Neff and George Wilson are put on the case. But it soon becomes apparent that this is not going to be just another day in Homicide. The murder scene is utterly repellent, the two victims having been mutilated, disembowelled and partially eaten, and then things turn even more bizarre when forensic analysis uncovers traces of unidentifiable ‘canine’ assailants.
Neff and Wilson consider various possibilities. Is a pack of particularly dangerous strays stalking New York? Or has someone trained himself a couple of killer dogs?
And of course, it doesn’t end with these two crimes. Soon there are more unexplained mutilation-deaths, usually in the most deprived corners of the city, the victims invariably drug-users or homeless alcoholics. In fact, it transpires that many Skid Row types have gone missing in the recent past without anyone really noticing.
Has something terrible been living concealed alongside the normal citizenry for decades maybe, feeding on the flotsam of modern urban life?
This ‘something’ is introduced to us in short-order, because a big part of this famous crime/horror crossover novel’s appeal is that it gives us the chance to assess the unfolding drama from both viewpoints – man’s and beast’s.
The Wolfen themselves are a kind of werewolf pack, only they don’t live normal lives and then suddenly grow hairy at night and start howling at the moon. They retain their hybrid form 24/7, and are incredibly strong and ferocious, and very, very agile – when they launch their murderous attacks, which we get to see unstintingly, it is in a blood-spattered blur of immeasurable speed. They are also hyper-sensitive and intelligent, and it isn’t long before they realise the cops are hunting them. As such, they opt to strike back hard, pre-empting their own demise by killing their two main opponents, Neff and Wilson.
When our heroes wise up to the fact they are next in line, they go to ground themselves, but that isn’t easy when the predators on their tail are the most proficient, the most savage and the most relentless the modern world has ever seen …
How to start discussing this superior and extraordinary horror novel of the 1970s without saying that I’m completely bamboozled it ever dropped from sight the way it has? This is partly, I suspect, due to the rather poor movie adaptation made in 1981, which, though it had its moments, strayed a long way from the original, preferring to talk politics and Native American mysticism, and starring Albert Finny as Wilson and Diane Venora as Neff, two good actors but sadly miscast here.
The worst mistake the film made, however, was with the Wolfen themselves, which it basically depicted as large, cute-looking dogs who panted more than they snarled, and whose complex nature and society it completely failed to examine. In the novel, the Wolfen are hellish antagonists for our hapless cop heroes, especially as at first no-one even believes they exist; they are literally a pack of killing machines – as curious Dr. Carl Ferguson, from the New York Museum of Natural History, discovers when he tries to make friends with them – and yet you sympathise with their position. This is their world as much as ours, but they know that if they were to come out into the open they’d be exterminated. Despite this, they are remarkable creatures; not just physically impressive, but reasoning and emotional – they have strong family ties, individual personalities, an order of rank and loyalty, and a strong survival instinct, which naturally resists a world they know would unhesitatingly destroy them.
On top of all this, the original Neff and Wilson are a great pair of down-at-heel heroes, the former a cool and attractive but tightly-wound officer who is constantly having to deal with the fall-out of cop-husband Dick’s dodgy dealings (he is now being investigated for corruption), and who wages a daily personal war against the institutionalised chauvinism that embattles her (this is the 70s, remember – female detectives were few and far between). Wilson, on the other hand, is more an archetype: slobbish, a drinker and a time-served veteran who, though he’s good at the job, is often unmotivated these days. He drives his partner mad with his lackadaisical approach and cynical attitude (not to mention his unspoken desire for her), but on the whole they work well together and trust each other, and you genuinely fear for them as the danger intensifies.
One accusation aimed at The Wolfen was that its hardboiled crime atmosphere jars with the underlying horror story, and that many of its protagonists are too willing to accept the mythical supernatural killers in their midst. But I don’t buy that. To start with, the Wolfen are basically animals – monstrous for sure, but non-supernatural. Secondly, Neff and Wilson only come round to accepting this via a long learning-curve, during which they encounter increasingly persuasive and gory evidence.
Meanwhile, the vast, grimy sprawl of the city has a role too. Yes, superficially The Wolfen is a crime thriller: it goes heavy on the legal speak and the police procedural, and as I’ve said, the cops are real cops with real-life problems – everything in The Wolfen , aside from the beasts themselves, is real. But I don’t think I’ve ever read a book in which any city, least of all the Big Apple, is as dingily and desolately portrayed as it is here.
I swear, it’s almost dreamlike: the endless dirt and garbage, the graffiti, the urban dereliction, the towering hulks of empty, boarded-up buildings – it’s a despair-ridden Hellscape, a darkly fantastical necropolis where almost any type of badness could be lurking. And it is used particularly well in one scene, where the two cops are drawn into the hideous environment of a derelict apartment block by the persistent crying of a baby, only to suddenly get suspicious that this isn’t what they are hearing at all but someone, or something, mimicking the sound in order to lure them. This is easily one of the most terrifying scenes I’ve ever read in any novel … for which reason I’ll say no more about it because that would really spoil things.
Suffice to say that Strieber corkscrews the tension from this point on, creating fewer and fewer places where our heroes can feel safe, until eventually there is nowhere at all – and what an explosive finale results from that.
At the end of the day, you just have to read The Wolfen yourselves. Okay, it’s an oldish book, but it’s still incredibly fast and taut, and beautiful writing – even when it’s ‘beautifully horrible’ like this – is beautiful writing, whatever its era. 
As usual – purely for fun, you understand – here are my picks for who should play the leads if a more truthful version of The Wolfen ever makes it to the movie or TV screen (the first film was okay in parts, but in my view it made the big mistake of veering way too far from the source material; if it ain’t broken, why fix it?):
Detective Becky Neff – Bridget Moynahan 
Detective George Wilson – David Duchovny 
Dr. Carl Ferguson – Chiwetel Ejiofor

(In terms of the images used in this blog, from top to bottom we have: Paul Campion's pre-production design of a minion werewolf from the early days of development on War Wolf; an original medieval portrayal of the bloody battle of Aljubarotta in 1385; two 17th century woodcuts depicting werewolves; Andy Briggs; Simon West;The Devil's Rock; more Paul Campion preproduction artwork, this time depicting the War Wolf as it encroaches on an enemy stronghold; and last but far from least, the original 1978 cover of The Wolfen - the very one I bought all those years ago, heheheh ...)

Most terrifying mysteries of the real world

There’s definitely an air of ‘the truth is out there’ this week, as we assess some strange and bewildering things that may actually exist in our world … though then again, they may not.
To start with, today’s book review will focus on Steve Alten’s epic action/horror tale of cryptozoology gone mad, MEG. It already enjoys classic status, but if you haven’t yet heard of it, think blue water and an unfeasibly massive dorsal fin cutting a bloody wake along a sun-drenched but worryingly depopulated coastline, and you won’t go far wrong.
For those who’ve only come here for the review, you’ll find it, as always, towards the lower end of this post. Be my guest and zoom on down. However, for those who’ve got a little more time on their hands, I first I thought it might be fun to trawl through my top 10 weird and scary photos from the internet and, where possible, offer real-world explanations for them.
Yes, you’ll most likely have seen several of these images before, if not all of them, but I dug around a bit and tried to come up with some relevant background info. Most, as you’ll see, are not actually as mysterious as they may initially appear, but one or two still defy understanding.  1. MEGALODON …

Megalodon, or Carcharodon megalodon, was the apex predator of the prehistoric ocean. In essence, a gargantuan shark, a 60 foot long, 50 ton killing machine, it is probably more deserving of the epithet ‘sea monster’ than any other aquatic creature that has ever lived.
It flourished primarily in the Cenozoic Era, and though there are fragments of archaeological evidence to suggest that specimens of Megalodon might have lived on until as recently as 10,000 years ago (a blip in evolutionary time between then and now!), the clever money is on them all being gone by the year 1,000,000 BC. 
However, when this incredible photograph first emerged in the early 2010s, purporting to show an image captured by German naval forces during World War Two just off Cape Town, it set the cryptozoological community’s head spinning.
Rumours had circled for years that Megalodon might still exist; the ocean’s extreme depths are largely unmapped, there have been many unexplained sinkings of ships, occasional so-called sightings, and so forth. But this picture looked like the first piece of real, solid evidence.
Except, sadly, that it wasn’t.
It was first presented as proof on Megalodon, The Monster Shark Lives, a mockumentary first aired by Discovery Channel in 2013, to which disclaimers attached to the programme before it was aired admitted that some of the evidence about to be screened was fictional.
As such, it is most likely to be a professionally-made fake.
German military forces never used the swastika watermark on their photographic records, the sepia-toning was unknown in military reconnaissance photography at that time, and the titanic dorsal fin, somewhat suspiciously, is leaving no wake. One independent researcher has even claimed to have found the actual footage from which this still was taken, and assures us there was no shark there beforehand, of any size.

2. THE LAST PHOTOGRAPH OF CHARLIE NOONAN …

This now famous American legend tells the tale of a roaming folklorist in the 1920s/30s called Charlie Noonan. According to the tales, Noonan would travel from state to state, seeking out strange and wonderful stories and looking to capture evidence for them on his box-camera. His final trip took him to Oklahoma at the time of the Dust Bowl. He was on the trail of a mysterious old woman who allegedly lived in an area of farmland that had completely died, and who supposedly “was not entirely human”.  It was never specified what the latter actually meant, but she was also said to be accompanied by a demonic hound.
Even then, in a time of despair, the whole thing sounded fanciful, but Noonan eventually got in touch with his wife and told her that he’d met a farmer who’d directed him to a shack where he believed the old woman lived. Noonan apparently set off, but was never heard from again. Several months later, news of his disappearance made the papers, and a Tulsa pawnbroker remembered an itinerant coming into his shop a few days earlier and selling him an old box-camera.
When the pawnbroker examined the camera, it was engraved with the name ‘Charles Noonan’. It also contained a roll of film, which the authorities subsequently developed. The above picture was the only image on the film.
This is certainly a spooky story, and while investigators have never uncovered anything to prove that it really happened – for example, Charlie Noonan is untraceable as a historical person – they have never been able to disprove it either. It first appeared online on a Creepypasta webpage, which may weaken its provenance in the eyes of some, though the author of that page asserted that he came into possession of it when an anonymous correspondent attempted to sell a clutch of supernatural images to a publishing house he was employed by at the time. 
3. THE BLACK KNIGHT SATELLITE …


The ‘Black Knight Satellite’ is possibly our most well-known legend of outer space.
In essence, it is an unknown UFO which has reputedly been circling Earth in a near-polar orbit for the last 13,000 years, and from time to time beaming down indecipherable signals. Conspiracy theorists claim that NASA astronauts have located and examined this elusive extraterrestrial object and, rather suspiciously, have kept the data to themselves. It is shrouded in mystery – even the origins of the name are unknown, but the scientific establishment denies its existence, putting the ‘sightings’ down to a combination of misidentified natural phenomena and science-fiction stories masquerading as truth.
The image above, one of several allegedly depicting the anomaly, is dismissed as a normal piece of space debris, probably connected to one of Earth’s own rocket or satellite launches.

4. THE EJDALLIM WITCHES …

Sometime in the early 2010s, a New Orleans photographer got creative with the wedding he was covering. With the happy event taking place in the city’s attractive French Quarter, the imaginative snapper decided to get some really memorable pix by going airborne (most likely by using a drone). The resulting shots were certainly different from the norm, especially these two, which were uploaded onto the internet from a photobucket account called ‘Edjallim’, and appear to depict a whole row of uninvited guests: weird, masked and hooded figures standing in a row on a balcony overlooking the happy event.
Amazing theories soon abounded. Had some kind of cult attended the wedding in secret, perhaps to work a spell or maybe profane a Christian ritual? Was it possible the photographer had captured a bunch of ghosts? After all, this was at the rear of the Brulatour House, which was built in 1816 and had witnessed many real-life melodramas over the passing centuries.
Unfortunately, the truth is more mundane. The Brulatour House is an adjunct of the Historic New Orleans Museum, and the eerie figures were part of an installation created by artist Dawn DeDeux.

5. EDWARD MORDRAKE …


The mysterious and distressing case of Edward Mordrake has long been thought to be true. Not least because of this famous photograph of him, which has circulated the internet for years, but also because the most detailed reference to his case can be found in Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, a distinguished publication of 1896, penned by doctors George Gould and Walter Pyle.
According to this august account, Mordrake was heir to a lavish estate in England in the mid-19th century, but he was also born with a second face on the back of his skull. What was more, this second face was actually alive. Most of the time it was inert, though close examination revealed that some changes in its expression occurred when Mordrake was in an emotional state: it inclined towards a smile when he was happy (which wasn’t very often), and to a sneer when he was sad. However, Mordrake begged the medical men of his age to surgically remove it, as he claimed that each night, when he was in bed, it whispered hideous things to him “such as are only heard in Hell”.
When this dangerous treatment was refused, Mordrake became progressively more deranged, finally taking his own life at the age of 23. While such a birth defect is not impossible – modern medicine concludes that Mordrake was stricken by craniopagus parasiticus, a rare form of parasitic twinning – there is still every chance that his story is pure fiction.
Gould and Pyle admitted to never having examined him, and drawing all their conclusions from an earlier article written by a layman who they didn’t name, though modern researchers think that layman was Charles Hildreth, a poet and fantasy author, who in the Boston Post of 1895 quoted the non-existent Royal Scientific Society as proof of famous hybrids like the ‘Fishwoman of Lincoln’ and the ‘Half-Human Crab’ (of whom there are no records anywhere), and of course, ‘Edward Mordrake, the two-faced man’. Meanwhile, the sole physical evidence for Modrake’s life – the above photograph – actually depicts a wax model made long after he supposedly died, though where it resides today, nobody knows.

6. THE FALLING BODY …

Texan family, the Coopers, moved into their dream home sometime in the mid-1950s. On the first night in the new property, the father took this photograph of his wife, two children and mother-in-law. When the picture was exposed, this ghastly falling form appeared, even though the family swore that no-one else was present when the picture was taken, much less someone hanging upside down or falling from the ceiling.
It certainly looks ghostly and no completely convincing explanation has ever been offered, but attempts to track down the Cooper family in modern times have noticeably failed – which seems odd, and in addition analysts have pointed to minor details apparently indicating Photoshop activity.
It has also been suggested that this is a double-exposure, or even that the entire set-up is fake, the family nothing more than models posing for a contemporary ‘horror art’ exhibit. The only problem with this latter, more prosaic theory is that there’s no record of that ever happening either.

7. SKUNK APE …

In 2000, this image was mailed anonymously to the Sheriff’s Department in Sarasota County, Florida, and purports to show the terrifying ‘Skunk Ape’, an unknown hominid said to roam the swamplands of the American South. 
As weird and mysterious photographs go, this one is certainly impressive. The person who sent the picture withheld their name, but claimed to be a local female resident, who caught the image in her own back garden and said that that on three separate occasions the monstrous ape had approached the house in search of apples scattered in the yard. She herself thought it might be an escaped orangutan.
The picture’s origin has now been traced to the vicinity of the Myakka River, and though it may seem suspicious that the photographer has still not come forward, the official explanation – that this is an everyday black bear – seems unrealistic to me. This is like no black bear I’ve ever seen.

8. THE FACES OF BELMEZ …

From 1971, the Pereira house in Andalusia, Spain, became the scene of a famous so-called paranormal event, when human faces began to form naturally in the concrete on the main floor.Sensation followed sensation when the floor was torn up and re-laid, and yet more faces appeared, only to disappear later and then reappear again. Some were said to have aged, others to have changed their expressions depending on the mood of the Pereira family.
Excavations later revealed that the house was constructed on an old burial site, which in the eyes of many parapsychologists confirmed that this was a genuine supernatural incident, though scientists also got in on the act, claiming to have found various traces of paint which suggested that it might have been an elaborate hoax.

9. MIDWESTERN MATRICIDE …


This legendary Halloween photograph depicts the Buckley Family, hardworking Midwest farm folk, whose happy life came to a grisly end sometime in the late 19th century.
The story goes that, as part of a Halloween prank, local kids decided to make dummies, behead them and then pose for photographs. The Buckley children – somewhat disturbed, it would seem – opted to join in the fun by decapitating their own mother. The photographer only realised that he had captured a real murder scene on film later on, when the plate was developed.
The police were quickly called and attended the house, only to find the children missing. They were never seen again, though the mother’s remains were still on the premises, partially eaten.
So goes the story, though sadly it’s another classic hoax. In actual fact, the original photo depicted a normal rural family; it was modern day Halloween artist, Edward Allen, who craftily and skilfully adjusted it into the scene of Victorian horror you see here and called it ‘Midwestern Matricide’.

10. THE WHOPPER HOPPER …


This infamous image is another curiosity that’s been making rounds of the internet for years, and is allegedly a record of a 1937 incident when a Montana farm labourer brought down a gigantic grasshopper near Miles City with a single blast of his trusty shotgun.
No further details have ever been made available: who the farmhand was, who the photographer was, what happened to the bizarre creature’s carcass afterwards, why it hadn’t been blown apart by his Winchester 12-gauge, etc.
As you may have guessed, the reasons for this are because the whole thing is a fake.
Comedic ‘whopper hopper’ images were quite popular in the American Midwest in the 1930s, a time and place when grasshopper hordes were posing a particular problem for agriculture and the local community did their best to put a brave face on it. Most of these images were sold as postcards or for advertising promos, and were never intended to be taken seriously. Frank Conard of Garden City, Kansas, may well have been the genius behind this one. He made several such, using carved wooden grasshopper models as props.
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THRILLERS, CHILLERS, SHOCKERS AND KILLERS …
An ongoing series of reviews of dark fiction (crime, thriller and horror novels) – both old and new – that I have recently read and enjoyed. I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum; there will certainly be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail, but by the definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these books in more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I particularly enjoyed … so I guess if you’d rather not know anything at all about these pieces of work in advance of reading them yourself, then these particular posts will not be your thing.

MEG  by Steve Alten (1997)
Former US Navy deep-sea diver, Jonas Taylor, is still haunted by the day he plumbed the bottom of the Mariana Trench and thought he glimpsed the long-extinct Megalodon. Few people took him seriously at the time, including Maggie, his ambitious TV reporter wife. Even though Taylor is now a civilian scientist, reasonably respected for his palaeontology work, Maggie knows that people still smirk behind his back and that this is no good for her career. As such, she embarks on a non-too-discreet affair with Bud Harris, Taylor’s former college buddy, who now leads a wealthy playboy lifestyle.
Taylor is thus at his lowest ebb when he is contacted by old friend Masao Tanaka, who runs a marine science operation. Tanaka has lost an earthquake-detecting submersible deep in the Mariana and wants Taylor to retrieve it for him with the aid of his two hotshot aquanaut kids, the adventurous, self-assured DJ and his sister, the uber-cool Terry.
Taylor is not enthusiastic about returning to the Trench, and his proposed assistants give him little confidence, DJ treating the whole Megalodon thing as a joke, Terry jealous and mistrustful that a non-family member is being brought into such a complex and costly enterprise.
Initially the recovery mission goes well. Though the descent into the Trench is horrific, Taylor starts to rediscover his old deep-sea diving touch. But then disaster strikes – DJ is attacked and killed by a colossal bioluminescent fish. The Megalodon …
It comes as no surprise to me that Steve Alten’s famous deep sea action/horror has been under option in Hollywood since 1997, or that it spawned a hatful of successful sequels. Because this is pure escapism at its best. Okay, even though the science sounds good I’m sure it doesn’t add up to much in reality – but who cares about that? Because this book has got everything that Jaws had, and more: clearly defined goodie and baddie characters, a hero with vulnerabilities, an exotic location (endless acres of cobalt-blue water!), and a gargantuan, near-indestructible monster, which according to cryptozoologists the world over could still very likely exist.
It’s also written in that wonderfully slick American style, especially the bone-jarring action sequences, which come thick and fast and at times seem to explode off the page.
A creature feature for sure, an ocean-borne Godzilla in which an ancient beast proves too mighty for all of man’s weapons, meaning that only a truly ingenious solution will fix it (and that solution turns out to be an absolute eye-popper). But great fun and another easy, rapid-fire read. One that anyone can happily get their teeth into (sorry).
As always, and it’s just a bit of fun, here are my picks for who should play the leads if Meg someday makes it to the screen (it’s allegedly been stuck in Development Hell for the last 18 years, somewhat uncharitably referred to as ‘Jurasssic Shark’ – but at last there are rumours that movements are now afoot, which is no surprise if true, as it’s too good a basic concept not to make it at some point):
Jonas Taylor – Jeremy RennerMasao Tanaka – George TakeiTerry Tanaka – Anna NagataMaggie Taylor – Alice EveBud Harris – Dustin Clare 

(PS: I've no idea who to credit for the marvelous image I use at the top of this column - no name was mentioned on the site where I found it. If the snapper responsible would like to get in touch, I'll happily credit him/her, or even, if they so wish, take it down).

No place for a gentle touch in this dark web

I’ve been looking forward for ages to reviewing C.J. Sansom’s amazing crime / history / thriller cross-over, DISSOLUTION, and today is finally the day. As usual, my full review can be found at the lower end of this column. 

But before we get to that, if you’ve got the patience, I’ve got some updates regarding my own novel-writing exploits.
Folk will have seen in my last blogpost that the cover for my next crime novel, STRANGERS , was finally revealed by Avon Books (nicely in advance of its September publication). It’s quite an eye-catcher in my view, but at the same time details were also leaked concerning other projects of mine that are now being translated into German – including  STRANGERS , which, as SCHWARZE WITWEN (Black Widow), hits the shelves in January.
But isn’t it fascinating the different ways that various publishers seek to sell their product?
Just compare these two exceptional jackets. They are both exactly the same book and feature the same character – brand new detective, Lucy Clayburn – and yet they could not be more different in tone.
The British edition is clearly aimed at what I suspect is a more female-oriented market, with suggestions of hearth and home under threat, hints that vulnerability can be found in the midst of the cosiest suburban domesticity, and the overall implication that danger is around at all times. And what about that shout-line?
A stranger is just a killer you haven’t met yet …
That reinforces the message big time, as far as I can see.
The cover from German publishers, Piper, however, has a much more action-oriented feel. In fact, when Piper were designing this jacket, their cover artist got in touch with me and asked for a physical description of Lucy Clayburn and various pertinent details from her biography. That’s the first time that’s ever happened to me in terms of a novel, but it gave me the opportunity to explain that, as well as a young trainee-detective based in Manchester, Lucy is also a biker girl, brave, athletic, always up for a challenge, etc.
Is there any concession in Piper’s final composition to gender or femininity? Not much at first glance, I suspect. But look a little closer, and I think you’ll see that there actually is. It’s done in black and pink, after all. And I hope that isn’t taken as a trite remark or even a crass comment. It isn’t intended as such. It’s just that I’ve never seen an action-themed cover done in pink before. Fab or what?
Anyway, I’m one happy wordsmith seeing these two incredible covers, each one presenting a different publisher’s interpretation of the same novel.
On a not entirely dissimilar matter, the jackets to two other German translations of my books are now available for your perusal.
The first of these is the Heck novella, OBSESSION, which though it has not yet been published in the UK, will come out in Germany as BESESSEN later this year (watch this space for the actual date). This is an ‘early days’ adventure from the Mark Heckenburg canon, and is set during his time as a young DC in the East End of London. This one focusses on the disturbing case of a weird neighbourhood creeper.
Here’s a brief except:
‘What you running for, eh?’ Heck demanded. The prowler, who stank of stale sweat, shook his head dully; lank, unwashed hair swept curtain-like over his eyes. ‘I don’t … I don’t …’ He coughed as he tried to get his breath. ‘I don’t … have to say anything … I won’t be saying anything ’til I have a solicitor.’‘Oh, you won’t? What’s your name?’‘Bollocks, I’m not … not saying nothing.’‘That so?’ With progressively less effort, because the guy was totally shot, Heck muscled him back across the path towards the balustrade. The prowler only realised where they were going when it was too late. He tried to resist, but they were now at the parapet, the rotted stonework falling away when Heck kicked at it, crashing noisily into the abyss underneath. The prowler sucked in a tight, terrified breath as they teetered on the edge. Some twenty feet below, a liquid surface revealed water surging fast along a deep brick channel, most likely a run-through connecting the Hertford Union Canal with the Regent’s.‘Okay, Mr. Bollocks,’ Heck said. ‘You a good swimmer?’The prowler said nothing, but he’d stiffened with fear.‘How’d you reckon you’ll do with your hands cuffed?’ Heck snapped the bracelets into place, brutally locking the guy’s fat wrists in the small of his back.‘You … you can’t!’ the prowler stammered. ‘I need my solicitor …’ 
‘That’s where you’re wrong, Bollocks.’ Heck kicked his legs apart and stamped on the back of his left calf, knocking him down to his knees. ‘What you actually need is a lifejacket!’


The second cover is something completely different.
It’s for a translation of my Christmas horror collection of 2014, IN A DEEP DARK DECEMBER . The German version, DAS GESPENST VON KILLINGLY HALL (The Spectre of Killingly Hall, out next October) clearly focusses on the longest novella in the book – The Killing Ground, and tells the tale of Ruth and Alec Whitchurch, a husband and wife detective team hired by a US movie star to protect his family one snowy Christmas from the mythical cannibal hag said to haunt his new hunting estate on the Welsh borderland. But as with the British version, it includes the other four stories too, all of which equally (hopefully) possess the festive fear factor (though it wouldn’t be right to talk too much about that now, as it’s still only May – yah!).
Even so, here is a quick excerpt:
“I’m Ruth,” Ruth said.Now the child looked at her properly. “Like Ruth in the Bible?”“Was there a Ruth in the Bible?”The child looked shocked. “Aww! You don’t know your Bible. That’s bad.”“Yeah, you’re probably right. Still, I’m a friend of your daddy’s. Maybe I can be your friend, too?”Claudette chewed on a pen as she pondered this. “Are you going to be here for the party tomorrow night?”“Yes. Your daddy’s asked me to stay.”“Are you in the movies?”“No.”“You should be, you’re real pretty.”“Why thank you.” Ruth saw that Claudette was drawing what looked like a woman standing in a doorway. “That’s a pretty lady too.”“She came to see me yesterday,” the child said.“Is she going to be at the party?”“I don’t know, she didn’t talk much. I don’t think she’s a regular lady.”Ruth almost laughed. “Whatever do you mean?”Claudette recommenced drawing. “She just watched me. Through my bedroom window.”“Through your …? Sorry honey, what did you say?”“I was sleepy, so Anita thinks I just dreamed her.”“Anita?”“My maid. Do you have your own maid?”“No, I don’t.”“Really? Who helps you get your stuff?”“I have a husband for that. Tell me about this lady.”Claudette chattered on as she drew. “We’d just flown in, so I was real sleepy. Anita says I slept on the plane, but I don’t remember. I went to bed as soon as I got here. My bedroom’s cool. Do you want to come up and see it?”“Maybe later. This lady was looking in through the window, you say?”“I think I dreamed it. Because my bedroom’s upstairs and I don’t see how she could have got up there.”“And she just watched you?”“Uh-huh. But then Anita came in and called me a sleepyhead. Said I had to get my body to … adjut, adjut, what’s that word?”“ ‘Adjust’, honey.”“Yeah. I had to get my body to adjust to the new time-zone. Hey, that’s the first time I got it right. Is that cool?”At first Ruth couldn’t reply. She was too busy staring down at the picture. Armed with what she now knew, it depicted a woman not standing in a doorway, but on the outside of a tall, narrow casement. She was clinging on with one hand to either side of the frame. Her clothes were long and flowing, yet even through the child’s simple sketch work there was a suggestion of dirt and raggedness. Her facial features seemed normal enough, though the dark hair that framed them was thick and matted and hung down past her waist. It was an odd yet clearly deliberate touch that her eyes had a vague hint of redness.     
I can only say that I’m delighted with all my new jackets. It’s a great honour to be published in your native language, but when the readerships of other countries embrace it too, that’s a bonus you can normally only dream of.
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THRILLERS, CHILLERS, SHOCKERS AND KILLERS

An ongoing series of reviews of dark fiction (crime, thriller and horror novels) – both old and new – that I have recently read and enjoyed. I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum; there will certainly be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail, but by the definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these books in more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I particularly enjoyed … so I guess if you’d rather not know anything at all about these pieces of work in advance of reading them yourself, then these particular posts will not be your thing.

DISSOLUTION  
by C.J. Sansom (2003)
The year is 1537, and the Protestant Reformation is picking up pace. England is now a land of informers, interrogation by rack, falsified evidence, and the handing down of death sentences for the simple crime of holding an opinion.
The driving force behind his new tyranny is King Henry VIII, but his iron fist is Vicar-General Thomas Cromwell, a zealous bureaucrat hell-bent on dissolving the Catholic monasteries and dividing their lands and wealth among a grasping nobility. One of Cromwell’s prime agents in this cause is hunchbacked lawyer Matthew Shardlake, another committed reformer and a man of razor-sharp intellect. However, even Shardlake now harbours doubts about his master’s increasingly brutal and swingeing methods – more and more are going to the block, torture is ever more frequently used – so when he is assigned to investigate the murder of Robin Singleton, a fellow government official, at the remote, marsh-begirt monastery of Scarnsea, he is initially relieved.
Here should be an open-and-shut case. The monks are notoriously lax, as well as hostile to the new mood. There is no question about the righteousness of this enquiry, and Shardlake expects there’ll be suspects a-plenty – and indeed there are, because when he arrives there, Scarnsea turns out to be a den of vice and a nest of corruption.
Aided by his handsome young assistant, Mark Poer, Shardlake learns that, in addition to the murder, which involved decapitation by sword, a precious relic has been stolen and the monastery church desecrated in a weird satanic ceremony. He also uncovers evidence of fraudulent land sales perpetrated by some of the monks, dubious dealings with local smugglers, treasonous mutterings, and sexual improprieties (sodomy between men and boys, but also the molestation of serving-girls). At a purely personal level there is much here to question. While certain among the brethren are devoted to their role, others’ vocations are more doubtful: Abbot Fabian lives openly and unashamedly as a country squire; Prior Mortimus disciplines the novices with ridiculous viciousness; Brother Edwig measures everything in pounds, shillings and pence; Brother Gabriel is homosexual (a crime in that era); Brother Guy is a converted Moor; Brother Jerome is an unapologetic Catholic whose torture by Cromwell leads to him condemn the new England more vociferously each day.   
And yet, despite this catalogue of likely candidates, it is a far from straightforward enquiry. Shardlake finds that everyone here has something to hide, while almost no-one, whatever their rank, is straight with him about their true feelings for the Reformation. Even the local townsfolk have reason to be suspect, the commoners eager to curry favour with the King by loudly decrying the papists, their betters eager to acquire the papists’ land. Things are additionally complicated when Shardlake and Poer fall out over a comely serving-wench, Alice, and all the while a deep and bitter winter sets in, heavy snow virtually imprisoning our heroes in the grim and eerie structure at Scarnsea, which creates a brooding atmosphere of terror and evil when suddenly there is another murder, and then another one …
What can I say? This novel works for me on so many levels.
First of all, as a straightforward murder-mystery it makes for compulsive reading. Shardlake and Poer, though possessing authority, are constantly under threat in this isolated locale – tense moments abound – while the investigation, as they work their way through a complex tangle of clues, many of them contradicting each other, is riveting. Always, it seems, there are new questions and yet fewer and fewer answers. Is the killer someone who supports the Catholic cause, or someone who detests it? Was Singleton slain because he represented Cromwell and the King, or was it a personal matter? While on one hand the mystery appears to intersect with financial misdoings, on the other it looks like something sexual. On yet another it may involve witchcraft and Satanism. Is it possible the various murders look different in terms of their motives and modus operandi because they are the work of different murderers?
Though lengthy, the tale cracks on at great pace as Shardlake penetrates determinedly through the intrigue, winning some friends on the way but also plenty of enemies, and often having to dodge danger himself. When the resolution is finally reached, is it not exactly a jaw-dropper, but it is deeply satisfying and requires no suspension of belief given the widespread brutality and injustice of that era.
Shardlake himself is a fine central character. An unlikely hero, though he initially appears as a stealthy, eavesdropping man who insists on asking awkward questions and feels no guilt about foisting his beliefs on others, he is at heart a good soul who genuinely believes that a purer, fairer world can come from the Reformist movement. He has also suffered terribly at a personal level, not just from the physical pain of his crippled body but from the humiliation and mistrust it has brought on him, which makes him hugely sympathetic. In any case, Dissolution – the first of a whole series of Matthew Shardlake novels from C.J. Sansom – sees the Tudor-age investigator commence a long, arduous journey of self-discovery, during the course of which he is ever-more troubled by the new police state he serves and the apparent innocence of so many of its victims. 
The book also provides a fascinating snapshot of English intellectual life at the close of the Middle Ages and the dawn of the Early Modern Age, clearly outlining the differences between the factions on either side of the Reformist fence, the Catholics mistrustful of a lay-aristocracy with no remit to do good and aghast that centuries of holy tradition are being torn down, the Reformers infuriated by a monolithic ecclesiastical body that empowers itself by enthralling the populace in ignorance and superstition.
It also issues a stern warning about sanctimonious idealogues who are so certain of the righteousness of their cause that they are prepared to perform vicious deed to bring it about, and that is surely a message as pertinent today as it ever was. 

Dissolution is a multi-faceted tale of great depth and interest. In some ways, it is only superficially a murder-mystery (though as I say, it works compellingly on that level too), because there is so much more to it. But all that notwithstanding, it remains an absolute must for the reading collections of any fans of crime, thriller and/or historical fiction.
As always – purely for the fun of it – here are my picks for who should play the leads if Dissolution ever makes it to the movie or TV screen (it was adapted by BBC Radio in 2012, with Jason Watkins starring as Matthew Shardlake and Mark Bonner as Thomas Cromwell).
Matthew Shardlake – Toby JonesThomas Cromwell – Jeremy IronsMark Poer – Al WeaverAlice – Bethany MuirBrother Guy – Don WarringtonAbbott Fabian – Matthew MacfadyenPrior Mortimus – Andy SerkisBrother Jerome – David BradleyBrother Edwig – Mark Addy 
Brother Gabriel - Phil Davis
I know … big cast! What are the chances, eh?

The two Marks knock it out of the ballpark

Today we’re going to start on a completely self-indulgent note as I have no intention of missing this opportunity to show off the new cover for STRANGERS, my next crime novel (due for publication in September). 

Regular followers of this column will know that the German-language cover has recently been publicised as well - in fact there are two other German covers newly released aside from  STRANGERS  (or perhaps that should be SCHWARZE WITWEN!), but I'll discuss the new book and its various different and exciting jackets in a separate post, as the main emphasis today is to heap praise on two other novels - from the ever-trusty pens of MARK EDWARDS and MARK BILLINGHAM - which have completely caught my imagination during this month of April.   

They are both crime novels, so there is an ongoing theme here, but they amply illustrate the incredible range of styles and subject-matter that fall within the crime/thriller medium, and very adequately show just how good modern British crime-writing can be. 

So here, without further ado, is this week's ...


THRILLERS, CHILLERS, SHOCKERS AND KILLERS ...

An ongoing series of reviews of dark fiction (crime, thriller and horror novels) – both old and new – that I have recently read and enjoyed. I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum; there will certainly be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail, but by the definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these books in more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I particularly enjoyed … so I guess if you’d rather not know anything at all about these pieces of work in advance of reading them yourself, then these particular posts will not be your thing.

THE MAGPIES  
by Mark Edwards (2013)
Love-birds Jamie and Kirsty think they’re living the suburban dream when they acquire a spacious London flat at a knock-down price. The neighbourhood is genteel, the neighbours themselves welcoming. On top of that, both Jamie and Kirsty have good jobs, he a software engineer, she a paediatric nurse. A comfortable middle-class life together beckons.
Until – slowly and subtly – things start to go wrong.
The arrival of dead rats on their doorstep could be the work of an overly industrious local cat, but why does someone keep sending the Fire Brigade to their address, who keeps ordering fast food deliveries they don’t want, and why are they deluged with peculiar and sometimes downright offensive junk-mail? It isn’t long before they start to suspect they may somehow have offended their downstairs neighbours, Chris and Lucy Newton, a slightly older and curiously unsophisticated couple. Initially, there are scant clues that the Newtons are behind this campaign of unprovoked harassment, though they do complain to Jamie and Kirsty rather a lot and often about the most innocuous things.
In the first instance there is no obvious sense of danger, but author Mark Edwards is nothing if not an expert when it comes to slowly and mercilessly turning the psychological screw.
In its most basic sense, the situation the young couple have found themselves in is the stuff of nightmares. These are pleasant, conscientious people looking only to get on with their lives. One thing they are not is adversarial. Jamie is no macho man, and neither he nor Kirsty are streetwise – if anything they are naïve. Quite clearly they’d be easy victims for a determined sociopath, particularly if this warped person decided to make them his/her new ‘hobby’ – and this is the raw and terrible nerve that Mark Edwards now relentlessly plucks.
The violations against Jamie and Kirsty’s happy world become steadily more vicious and personal, soon invading every aspect of their lives, leaving our heroes increasingly frightened and disoriented, especially as the Newtons, whenever they are encountered face-to-face, remain affable and polite, which even puts doubt in the reader’s mind that they may be guilty. But a whole new level of horror is reached when Paul, Jamie’s best friend and sole ally, is terribly injured in a go-carting accident, which again looks as if it might have been engineered by Chris Newton.
This has a devastating effect on Jamie and Kirsty, whose own relationship finally starts to suffer. Isolated and friendless, feeling besieged, the couple try to struggle on, but even this isn’t the end of it. Each new day brings ever more elaborately sadistic outrages, until soon, driven beyond despair, having lost everything, Jamie opts to take drastic action to fight back.
But his invisible opponents are no ordinary neighbours from Hell.
Up until now, civilised man Jamie has only been able to guess at the degree of wickedness that faces him here …
The Magpies is a fascinating and highly intelligent psycho thriller written by an expert in low-key terror, but genuine spice is added to this hair-raising brew because the author himself experienced similar persecution in his earlier life, and that harrowing authenticity is written all the way through. It certainly explains why the torment is piled on so ruthlessly, layer after layer, each ghastly new development superseded by the next – if it isn’t rats it is spiders, if it isn’t damaging computer viruses, it is stage-managed fatal accidents – until it literally becomes overwhelming, until you, the reader, are ready to rip your own hair out, never mind the novel's hapless heroes.
However, there is more to this than mere mental torture. The mystery and suspense run deep. We are never totally convinced that Jamie and Kirsty are correct about the identity of their anonymous foes – there are several other neighbours aside from the Newtons, and some of their normal friends are less than helpful. Their increasing air of paranoia only adds to the mix; they become confused and irrational; so cleverly is the book written that at times you even wonder if anything malicious is actually going on at all.
On top of that, The Magpies is a finely-observed study of a strong relationship cracking under outside pressure. The slow deterioration of Jamie and Kirsty’s partnership is as tragic as it is frightening, and completely compelling because it is so believable. Be warned, the pain and desolation that soon fill the central characters’ lives in this book feel very real indeed. Of course, that also intensifies the reader’s desire to see justice done – or should that be revenge?
By the time you get to the end of this intense and absorbing novel, you won’t really care.
As always, purely as a bit of fun fantasy-casting, here are my picks for who should play the leads if The Magpiesever makes it to the screen:
Jamie – Ben Whishaw Kirsty – Sophie Turner Paul – Rupert Grint Chris – Neil MaskellLucy – MyAnna Buring

TIME OF DEATH  
by Mark Billingham (2013)
DI Tom Thorne and girlfriend, DS Helen Weeks, have taken a winter holiday in the Cotswolds, where they intend to spend Valentine’s Day together and enjoy a well-earned rest. But, as you can probably guess, from the commencement of Time of Death , the 13thouting for Mark Billingham’s gruff, no-nonsense hero, it is never going to be quite as easy as that.
Thorne, a veteran of the Murder Squad, is approaching middle-age these days, and still hasn’t entirely worked out his relationship with the relatively new woman in his life, DS Weeks. She is younger than he is, and doesn’t see the world in the same stark terms. However, it is Helen who makes the decision to suddenly interrupt their break and head north into rainy, flood-stricken Warwickshire, where an old school acquaintance, Linda Bates, is in trouble.
It seems that in Polesford, Helen’s rural but far-from-idyllic hometown, two teenage girls have been abducted, and one has now turned up in the woods, brutally murdered. In response, Warwickshire Police have laid their hands on local man, Stephen Bates – Linda’s husband – and look set to charge him with the crime.
Thorne is a little bemused as to why they are getting involved. By her own admission, Helen was not Linda’s best friend when they were kids, though they seem to share some kind of unspoken connection. On top of that, all Helen can really do once they arrive is provide a shoulder for Linda to cry on. And it’s a much-needed shoulder. Linda and her family are distraught and already being ostracised by their neighbours. Moreover, when Thorne looks into the case as an observer, it seems pretty straightforward. Even though Bates maintains his innocence, there is a mass of evidence stacked against him, and his alibi doesn’t stand up – in due course, he is charged with kidnapping and murder.
However, not all in Polesford is exactly as it should be.
Thorne isn’t won over by the loutish townsfolk, by the media who have swamped the place in a search for ever-more sensationalist news angles, or by the local investigation team, who have not been as thorough as he would like and who are increasingly resentful of his presence. When Phil Hendricks, his tattoo-covered but trusty forensics expert, joins him in Polesford, they commence an enquiry of their own – unofficially of course – and quickly start to uncover anomalies in the evidence.
Pretty soon, Thorne is convinced that Bates is innocent. But the local fuzz will have no truck with that, and in fact complain to his bosses in the Met (who attempt to call him off), while Helen is only marginally more useful. For the moment at least, the level-headed policewoman he knows and loves has vanished, to be replaced by someone who is secretive, snappy and inordinately stressed. Clearly, Helen herself has more than superficial issues with the town of her birth, and there is no guarantee they are unconnected to this enquiry.
But Thorne, the hard-nosed investigator, is now in his element. Amid foul weather and despite a storm of hostility, he battles on determinedly. Because if nothing else, he strongly suspects that the second of the two abducted girls is still in the grasp of the real killer, maybe still alive, and if so, enduring who knows what horrors …
Tom Thorne is an iconic cop character in British crime fiction, and his cases are never less than totally readable. I particularly enjoyed this one, though, because it takes a new approach.
All the usual coolness of Mark Billingham’s crime-writing is there. The slick prose; the polished characterisation; the quickfire, uber-realistic dialogue; the grim tone – yet again the ‘real crime’ feel pervades this book: desolated lives, a non-empathetic public, the countless unsavoury elements that combine to create Broken Britain. This is vintage Thorne territory, but on this occasion the Met’s best bloodhound is not seeking to prove a murder suspect’s guilt, but to establish his innocence.
And it works so well.
Thorne is one of crime fiction’s top good guys, mainly because he’s believable – totally human and fallible – but at the same time he has all the attributes of a hero. He’s no angel, but he knows a dodgy situation when he encounters one, and he doesn’t care whose nose he puts out when he’s on the trail of justice. Hendricks of course – Thorne’s less conservative, happier-go-luckier other self – makes a great sparring partner, but together their combined intellect is a fearsome force. And this is the other thing about Time of Death : it is distinctly NOT a tale of brawn over brain. Don’t get me wrong; Thorne can kick arse if he wants to (and so can Helen Weeks, as this book illustrates), but this time it’s all about the minutiae of forensics, Thorne and Hendricks bouncing ideas back and forth at lightning speed as they strive to save an innocent man and rescue a tormented child.
This is raw, page-turning action, even though much of it is cerebral rather than physical.
And the background to it all is richly atmospheric too, the rain-sodden landscape a last word in winter dreariness, the support-cast almost entirely comprised of gossips and misery-merchants: metal-head taxi-driver Jason Sweeney is particularly odious and a masterwork of slow-building menace; Trevor Hare, the pub landlord and former cop who becomes Thorne’s confidant in the village, is an opinionated know-all; Linda Jackson herself ranges back and forth between sweetness, light and embittered, foul-mouthed shrewiness; even Stephen Bates is a self-centred oddball and someone you wouldn’t ordinarily root for, and yet such is Billingham’s skill that you end up doing precisely that.
This is one of the best and most unusual police novels I’ve read in quite a while, but it’s not just a procedural. Sexual misbehaviour is a key aspect of this story, especially abusive misbehaviour, and not just where extreme examples like homicide are concerned. But Mark Billingham is a serious writer – he doesn’t do pulp fiction – and as such he handles these heart-rending subjects with a deftness of touch and understanding that elevate the entire thing way above the level of routine tawdry suspense thriller.
Time of Death is an intriguing but grown-up mystery, played out at breathless pace and yet never once straying beyond the realms of the completely authentic. An excellent read.
And here again, just for fun, are my selections for who should take the lead roles if Time of Death ever makes it to the screen (Thorne is no stranger to TV of course; Sleepyhead and Scaredycat– Thorne #1 and #2 – both made it in 2010, and for me David Morrissey and Aiden Gillen were perfect in their respective parts, so I’d see no reason to change that now):
DI Tom Thorne – David Morrissey DS Helen Weeks – Lorraine BurroughsPhil Hendricks – Aiden GillenLinda Bates – Felicity Jones Stephen Bates – Arthur DarvillTrevor Hare – Trevor Eve Jason Sweeney – Cillian MurphyAurora Harley – Anya Taylor-Joy

Nightmarish world of ghosts and monsters

I almost feel honoured this week to be reviewing BROKEN MONSTERS by Lauren Beukes, which is surely one of the most astonishing horror/fantasy/thriller novels I’ve read in many a year. But as usual, that’s for a little later – you can find my full review of it at the lower end of this column. Feel free to scroll your way down there right away if you so wish, but for those with more time on their hands, I’m first going to talk a little about the Jamesian elements in my TERROR TALES series, and am also honoured – I’m doubly honoured today, it seems – to be able to include the whole of a rather spiffing review of the series as written by the legendary Rosemary Pardoe in that Bible of all things MR James, the GHOSTS & SCHOLARS newsletter.
First of all ... what is the definition of Jamesian fiction?
Well ... lots of us would love to have a final, decisive answer on that. Such a thing would certainly aid with our own ghost stories. But I think that overall it’s a pleasingly elusive concept. Montague Rhodes James (left) is one of the most important writers of supernatural fiction in literary history, as relevant in the field now as he was during his lifetime (1862 – 1936). Readers of all cultures and creeds adore his work and get many different things out of it, so I don’t think it’s possible to lay out a definitive set pattern of requirements.
However, to try and be at least a little bit specific, I think there are some key ingredients to Jamesian fiction which you can sort of rely on ...
Firstly, the setting needs to be quite distinctive. Often it’s some fine old building of religious or scholarly antiquity: a cathedral, an abbey or a university, though seaside villages are also acceptable so long as they are – well, Jamesian in tone (sorry … not much help, I know). Rural towns in Europe and Scandinavia are not unknown, though it helps if they are also seats of arcane knowledge and ancient ritual.
Secondly, the cause of the trouble will often be the recovery after many centuries of some ancient, eldritch thing: the discovery of a long lost tomb or hidden room, or the retrieval of an old book or scroll, or some other dusty and mysterious artefact.
Thirdly, the supernatural entity invoked by this impertinence will be horrible and merciless. Call it a ghost if you wish (and sometimes it will be – as in an ancestor who returns), but that isn’t a prerequisite.

It could be a demon, a vampire, a ghoul, an animated church statue; Hell, it could be nothing we have a name for, but it must be real and it must be on its way already – coming fast to enact vengeance for the trespass or to reclaim the pillaged item (and quite often it won’t be seen in its grisly entirety until the final awful moments of the tale, though readers will get the nod that it’s on its way long before it arrives).
Fourthly, the hero is often a mild-mannered, intelligent but rather asexual character, a clergyman or university don, an amateur archaeologist or some other kind of scholar; someone learned in the field but unusually innocent in general terms – this innocence will quite often be his undoing, as he plods happily into the most appalling danger.  
Fifthly, the story is FRIGHTENING. This is probably the one non-negotiable element. Forget your nice, funny or whimsical English ghost stories, forget those voices from beyond that seek only to assist. MR James had no time for that nursery room gentility. His tales are still among the most chilling ever written, usually with savage outcomes, and you’re not doing the tradition any justice if you try to write Jamesian ghost stories of your own and don’t make them extremely scary and/or disturbing.
As you can probably tell, I’m a long-time lover of the Jamesian tale. Not that I’ve written too many myself – one or two at the most – but as editor of the  TERROR TALES  series, I have tried to include more than a few in the final line-ups, or at the very least have commissioned new work from contemporary ghost story writers who are strongly associated with the Jamesian school – Reggie Oliver, Steve Duffy, Roger Johnson, Helen Grant and Peter Bell, among many others.

Even if I hadn’t been a Jamesian fan, it would be near enough impossible to edit a series of supernatural horror anthologies based on and inspired by British regional folklore without including at least a few stories of that persuasion, the late MRJ also strongly influenced by eerie rural locations, village mysteries, hidden secrets, isolated coves, etc.
As such, and as I mentioned at the start of this post, the series has now come to the attention of Rosemary Pardoe at  GHOSTS & SCHOLARS , and she was good enough to include this lengthy assessment of it in her March edition. In case you missed that, Rosemary has now, very kindly, granted me permission to reprint her review in full on this blog.
And so here we go (many thanks, Ro):  

TERROR TALES OF… Edited by Paul FinchGray Friar Press Reviewed by Rosemary Pardoe
Paul Finch has been editing his Terror Tales series of paperback anthologies for Gray Friar Press on a roughly twice-yearly basis now since 2011.  
To date there have been nine volumes: Terror Tales of London, Terror Tales of East Anglia, Terror Tales of the Cotswolds, Terror Tales of the Lake District, Terror Tales of the Seaside, Terror Tales of Wales, Terror Tales of Yorkshire, Terror Tales of the Scottish Highlands and most recently Terror Tales of the Ocean. All of them are still available (print on demand) and all contain a mixture of (mostly) new stories with a few reprints by (mostly) current writers, set in the relevant areas, interspersed with little vignettes of local mythology, folklore and history.  
There are stories for Jamesian aficionados in the majority of the collections; and tales by authors whose names will be familiar to readers of Ghosts & Scholars, Haunted Library publications and the G&S Books of Shadows.

Thus, for instance, in the Scottish Highlands book there are stories by Helen Grant, Peter Bell, John Whitbourn and D.P. Watt, as well as a reprint of Sheila Hodgson's ‘The Fellow Travellers’. Similarly in Yorkshire, Chico Kidd and Christopher Harman feature; in Wales are Steve Duffy (‘Old as the Hills’, reprinted from G&S 33), Reggie Oliver and John Llewellyn Probert; at the Seaside are Ramsey Campbell, Reggie Oliver and Christopher Harman; in London, Roger Johnson's superb London that was Rome-influenced ‘The Soldier’ is a highlight; in the Cotswolds we find Ramsey Campbell, Christopher Harman, Reggie Oliver and John Llewellyn Probert; and in the Lake District are Ramsey Campbell, Reggie Oliver and Peter Bell. 
Of course, not all of these authors contribute Jamesian stories, while some of the writers who might be less familiar to G&S readers do. To illustrate the mix, and for obvious reasons, I've picked Terror Tales of East Anglia (2012) to look at in slightly more detail. 
It contains thirteen stories with twelve non-fiction vignettes; the latter are a mix of the familiar (the Murder in the Red Barn, the ghostly knight of Wandlebury Camp, the Rendlesham Forest UFO) and the unfamiliar (the mutilated torso that haunted Happisburgh, the demon of Wallasea Island, the giggling ghost of Dagworth Castle). 
Most of the tales are original to the volume, although some have since been reprinted elsewhere. 
The first Jamesian story is ‘The Watchman’ by Roger Johnson, reprinted from The Best of Ghosts & Scholars (1986). When a statue on the west front of Stockbridge Minster in Suffolk is replaced by one of St Michael and All Angels, it becomes clear that the former was sculpted from the life; and anyone who attempts to steal from the Minster is running a considerable risk. ‘The Watchman’ isn’t Roger at his best (which, as we know, can be very good indeed), but it’s a decent, workmanlike, if predictable, antiquarian tale. 
I would say the same about Edward Pearce’s ‘The Little Wooden Box’, which again deals with the perils of stealing from an ecclesiastical building. 
Steve Duffy’s ‘The Marsh Warden’ (originally published in Midnight Never Comes, 1997), set in and around an inn on the Essex marshes, is also traditional in plot, involving plague pits and haunted wells. But it’s so immaculately and atmospherically written that it’s a joy to read and (although I admire him for being his own man and going his own way) it makes me regret that Steve no longer seems to write Jamesian fiction. 
‘Wolferton Hall’ by James Doig (originally in Shadows and Silence, 2000) is another tale that deals in the standard James themes: an academic researches family papers in a Norfolk country house, and is disturbed by a fresco depicting a "man being pursued by [a] curious scarecrow figure". Yet a story like this, when written with the skilful scholarly touch that is characteristic of James Doig, remains extremely effective and satisfying. Johnny Mains’ ‘Aldeburgh’, a sequel to ‘A Warning to the Curious’ as the title suggests, is more unusual. Or at least it starts that way as a murder mystery, with the intriguing premise that the events in the story were based on fact, and were inspired by the death of one Mr Payton. His demise was witnessed by MRJ himself, and Mr Payton has a son who accuses MRJ of killing his father. 
Unfortunately the tale peters out with an ending that doesn’t live up to the promise of the start (it’s also a problem that the character of MRJ in the story isn’t in the least like the real one). Another story set in (a renamed) Aldeburgh is Reggie Oliver’s excellent ‘The Spooks of Shellborough’. 
This is not exactly a ‘Warning to the Curious’-connected tale, and yet it takes certain motifs from that story: the distant figure which haunts the narrator's golfing companion; and also the description of the two bodies at the end, found with their mouths choked by sand. 
The final image of the revenant is Jamesian enough, and shocks because the rest of the tale is so restrained. I also like ‘Double Space’, Gary Fry’s smart variant on the ‘Casting the Runes’ style curse that rebounds on its sender.
Non-Jamesian stories are by the likes of Christopher Harman, Paul Finch and Simon Bestwick, but my favourite of these is Mark Valentine's superb ‘The Fall of the King of Babylon’ (reprinted in Seventeen Stories, 2013). Mark rarely tackles out-and-out horror, but this is an exception. Set in Ely in the medieval period when that city acquired its name from its thriving industry in the harvesting of a certain sort of fish, this story demonstrates that one should never get on their wrong side. As an eel-phobic, I never really doubted that, but non-phobics will get a chill from the tale too, and everyone can appreciate the wonderfully evoked, dark setting and atmosphere.
Happily, there is no end in sight for the Terror Tales series. 
The latest, Terror Tales of the Ocean (with contributions from Stephen Laws, Steve Duffy, Adam Golaski, Adam Nevill, Lynda E. Rucker, etc.), continues to the same standard, although by its nature there are few if any Jamesian stories in this volume. 
Paul Finch already has plans for Terror Tales of Cornwall, Terror Tales of the Northwest, Terror Tales of the Home Counties, Terror Tales of the Midlands and Terror Tales of the South Coast.  He won't even be stopping when Great Britain is fully covered, the idea at that stage being to venture over the seas to Europe and possibly beyond. 
With such a good stable of authors regularly participating, I don't foresee any drop-off in quality either. Inevitably not every story will please everyone (some by no means please me) but other anthologists will struggle hard to reach the consistent standard of these books, which G&S has neglected for too long ...


Again, many thanks to Rosemary. You can hook up with Ghosts & Scholars and discover all you need to about Jamesian fiction both old and new by either following this LINK. Or alternatively, contact Rosemary Pardoe directly at dandrpardoe@gmail.com and she’ll be happy to send you an info/order form.
The images used in this section of the blog, from the top down, are: Lost Hearts (BBC, 1973); MRJ himself; Whistle and I'll Come to You (BBC, 1968); The Tractate Middloth (BBC, 2013); The Stalls of Barchester (BBC, 1971); G&S #9, cover illustration by Tony Patrick; G&S #28, cover illustration by Paul Lowe; G&S #32, cover illustration by Paul Lowe; G&S # 19, cover illustration by Douglas Walters; and Terror Tales of the Ocean, artwork by Neil Williams.
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THRILLERS, CHILLERS, SHOCKERS AND KILLERS

An ongoing series of reviews of dark fiction (crime, thriller and horror novels) – both old and new – that I have recently read and enjoyed. I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum; there will certainly be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail, but by the definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these books in more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I particularly enjoyed … so I guess if you’d rather not know anything at all about these pieces of work in advance of reading them yourself, then these particular posts will not be your thing.
BROKEN MONSTERS  
by Lauren Beukes (2014)
The time is now. The place is Detroit, a city in its post-industrial death throes.
This is a landscape that is not just physically decayed, but morally bereft: where there are more citizens without jobs than with; where the homeless almost outnumber the residents; where over-worldly youngsters drink, take drugs and swear; where underage girls tease online paedophiles just for kicks, and high school kids are more interested in filming their friends being bullied than in helping them out; a place where graffiti and ruin-porn pass for art; where any hipster careerist thinks he/she can be a sculptor, or a musician, or a writer, or a journalist, or a social commentator, and yet somehow all of them finish up being vapid, vacuous wannabes.
In the midst of this urban ooze, cop and single mom Detective Gabi Versado finds herself investigating a particularly distressing case.
The fusing of a dead boy’s torso to the hindquarters of a deer sparks the commencement of a sadistic and gratuitous murder spree – the handiwork of a killer soon known as the ‘Detroit Monster’ because of the grotesque public displays he makes of his victims.
All the monumental complexity of a massive homicide enquiry follows, with various colourful but complex characters getting in on the act. For example, Layla is Gabi’s neglected yet spirited daughter, one of those brattish modern teens who can’t seem to live if she isn’t constantly active on social media, and yet who in this case is irrepressibly likeable; Jonno Haim is a failed New York writer-turned-blogger, a minimally-talented chancer looking to kick-start a career he hasn’t earned by shouldering his way into the Detroit arts scene; Thomas ‘TK’ Keen is an amiable hobo, a father figure to his fellow homeless, but a guy haunted by his own tragic and violent past; and then we have Clayton Broom, another failure – all these lives are broken in this land of broken dreams! – a skilled artist who struggles to support himself when his work doesn’t sell, and as such lives in a slum, absorbedly dwelling on his bizarre visions … which leaves him open to some very pernicious influences.
And this is the point where, for some readers at least, this novel’s wheels have come off.
Fans of Lauren Beukes, particularly those familiar with her stunning tale of magical realism, The Shining Girls, will probably expect Broken Monsters to enter the territory of the unreal at some point, and – well, that’s precisely what it does. Quite unapologetically. So be under no illusion. Despite first appearances, this is NOT a police procedural or even a traditional murder mystery.
At a relatively early stage, the identity of the felon is given away, but he quite literally is not himself. Call it what you will – an alien intelligence, a ghost, a demon, a faerie, an ancient god – but some powerful, unknowable and insane entity has awakened inside this already damaged soul, driving him to commit terrible deeds, each time intensifying the horror and savagery in its vain efforts to create better things, to entrance and heal the suffering public, and usher in a new age of wonder and enlightenment through the chalk doorways it motivates him to inscribe on walls near the scenes of his crimes.
And this is the real narrative, not the internal fantasy of a madman. The closer our various heroes come to resolving this case, the ever more bizarre, lurid and warped the realities they encounter, until we reach a point where you know in your bones that normality can never resume. It builds to such a crescendo of the weird and horrific that the annihilation of some of the good guys – or at least the annihilation of their sanity – seems inevitable …
I hate pigeon-holing in literature, but in this case it serves a valid purpose. Broken Monsters may not be your run-of-the-mill crime thriller. But neither is it your standard urban horror story. In fact, if the vague term ‘dark fantasy’ ever had a living embodiment, this is it. And so what if certain readers were not happy about that? That is down to their own preconceptions – they thought they were reading cops ‘n’ robbers when all the blurbs said otherwise.  
For me, in this case if none other, the quality is more important than the content. Because this is far and away one of the most readable novels I’ve ever picked up. It doesn’t just move at electrifying pace, it is exquisitely written. The loving descriptions of the half-abandoned city are intense and detailed – you can almost smell the oil and filth, the rotted steel, the rain-soaked concrete. The characters are rich and multi-layered, all forlorn, all struggling, all in many ways annoying, and yet on occasion funny and loveable too, and as such, so real that it is easy to form emotional connections with them. Even the killer is the star-turn in one achingly sad scene where, in an unwitting attempt to head off his ghastly future, he tries to reacquaint with the mother of his child, a slatternly ‘roadhouse mom’ – who casually and spitefully rejects him.
For all these reasons, Broken Monsters gets my highest recommendation. Yes, the change of gear (the ‘thriller to horror’ moment) is a bit of a jolt for those who didn’t anticipate it, but this is truly excellent stuff: compelling and fascinating, at the same time both depressing and uplifting. The depth and imagery of the ruined city and the raddled folk living therein is almost seductive; the soullessness of the internet age will horrify you; the constant madness of mass-communication, mass profanity, mass insolence, mass embarrassment – the whole damn thing is amazing and infuriating and scary and intoxicating all at the same time.
You may not love this novel (unlike me – I did, as if you can’t tell!), but I can damn well guarantee that you’ll be totally overwhelmed by it.
And as always – purely for a laugh, you understand – here are my picks for who should play the leads if Broken Monsters ever makes it to the movie or TV screen (which is surely very likely given the adaptation clamour that greeted The Shining Girls). 

Detective Gabi Versado – Salma Hayek 
Layla  – Amandla Stenburg 
Thomas 'TK' Keen  – Chris Chalk 
Jonna Haim  – Jonathan Rhys Meyers 
Clayton Broom  – Peter Stormare

Writing speculative scripts - is it worth it?

There are few more exciting thrillers I've read in recent times than Simon Wood's high octane THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY, and as such I've taken it on myself to scribble out a full review of it. But, as usual, you'll find that at the lower end of this column. 

Scroll down there straight away, if you wish. But if you also fancy pondering the thorny issue of spec scripts and whether it can ever pay to take the time out of your busy schedule to write them, then feel free to head south at a more leisurely pace, and check out my own views on the matter first ...

Soo, script-writing on spec. Is it worth it?

A big question indeed.

This is a conversation I've had repeatedly with Cathy, my wife and best friend of the last 28 years and my business partner for the last four. So I'm very familiar with the arguments for and against, but even then finding a satisfactory answer is never easy (at least not at first glance).

When you're first starting out as a screen-writer, you don't have much choice. No producer is going to commission a script from you if you haven't got a track-record (these days you're lucky if they'll commission a script from you if you HAVE got one). It's amazing how much more receptive to your ideas film and TV companies tend to be if you can walk into their office, hit them with a cool pitch and then, in a single artistic flourish, lay a finished first-draft script on their desk as well (even though they'll probably not bother to read the script until you've written a concise outline and they've read that first).

But even then it's going to be a long-shot, mainly because, unless you had a consultation with them beforehand, you're not really sure what kind of project they're looking for, and even if you have had a consultation, things may have changed in the last couple of weeks, or some other writer who they may know better and therefore trust more might have come along with a similar or better idea, or maybe because you haven't developed the idea they expressed interest in the way they'd have liked you to because, you know, you didn't have a producer or script-editor looking over your shoulder while you were writing it, etc etc ...

Either way, it most likely means you've done an awful lot of work for nothing. And it won't end there.

The average  movie-length screenplay usually comes in at something like 20K-25K words, which is no small effort on your part when you're not being paid for it - and there's the other rub.

When you've invested so much time and effort into a thing, you don't want to just throw it into a drawer. You've got to keep hawking it around, which is yet more time and energy. And of course each new producer you show it to will likely be in a similar position to the first: Is it the sort of thing he/she is looking for?, have you developed it they way they'd like?, and so on.

It's an ominous prospect, and my own experience reinforces this. I'm better known these days as a novelist. But I've done my share of screen-writing. The problem is that - despite writing scripts for pre-existing television shows, where I had some success during my early days - I've only written two movie scripts which have actually progressed right the way through preproduction, been made, and have then gone out to general distribution. On the first of these, SPIRIT TRAP (2005), I was only a co-writer anyway, a first-draft script already existing when I was brought in to 'doctor' it. For the second, THE DEVIL'S ROCK (2011), I was acquainted with a talented young director, Paul Campion, who had already devised a detailed idea, had got a producer on board, and was willing to pay me to flesh it out into a script.

Neither of those projects involved speculative writing. The vast majority of the scripts I DID write on spec, however - and oh yes, there have been many - have rarely got close to principle photography, even though several have made it into actual development. For example, my screen adapation of   CAPE WRATH , my Bram Stroker Award nominee short novel of 2001, was under option for nearly nine years and has still never been made. It's been though something like 10 drafts now and has been workshopped half a dozen times, and is probably in the best shape I could ever imagine a script of mine being, but at present it sits and gathers dust. My forthcoming next novel, STRANGERS, conerning a young female detective at the sharp end of crime in Manchester, commenced life as a spec TV script called NO FURY way back in 1993; it was optioned on and off, but so much time passed on this one that in the end I saw better potential in turning it into a book.

So, on first glance - and purely coming at this with brain rather than heart, it doesn't look as if it's worth writing speculative film or TV scripts.

But you know ... are we really in this business because we are logic machines who will only type out what we are 100% sure we can sell, who will only create if there is a dead-cert buyer, who will only write what the general herd wants us to, who won't get out of bed for less than a guaranteed five grand a day?

Of course we aren't.

I don't know any writer who is successful today who hasn't at one time or another had to slug his/her way through a jungle of indifference, who hasn't ridden the blows of rejection again and again, who hasn't produced speculative work at length over many, many agonising years.

Back in 2013, at the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton, I was fortunate enough to chair a 'Selling Your Spec Script' panel, which among others comprised script-writing legends like Stephen Volk, Richard Christian Matheson and Peter Atkins, not to mention top London literary agent, Ellen Gallagher - all of whom were hugely positive about spec-script writing (with the obvious caveats that you have to do a proper job, you have to be professional, you have to be prepared to take an awful lot of metaphorical smacks on the nose, and so forth), all of them having done this very thing themselves multiple times.

None of the panelists felt that the difficulties you will encounter trying to sell a speculative script should put you off writing one - if you've actually got the gumption to embark on that rocky road.

One of the biggest off-putters when it comes to writing speculatively (be it scripts, books, stories, anything really) is the amount of unpaid time you are required to spend at your keyboard. But if I was to look at this, say ... from a purely personal perspective, it would be sheer folly for me NOT to make this time available. In addition to having three ideas-folders that are, each one, the size of a telephone directory, I also have stacks of novellas, novelettes and short stories, all published many years ago but now fading into the mists of history. With the best will in the world, at least some of these have got to be script-worthy, and so as a professional writer I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't dig through them now and then and adapt as many as I could into screenplays. Hell, if the story's already written, the characters are already developed - what have you got to lose?

Ultimately, it's a matter for the individual. It boils down to how serious you are about writing. If you're in it for the long-haul, you've got to keep battering that rampart of indifference with every weapon you've got, and the more of those weapons you produce, the greater your chance of creating a breach.

The whole thing was summed up far more eloquently than I ever could by Richard Christian Matheson at the Spec Scripts panel back at Brighton in 2013, when he said:

"You have to have a really high threshold for rejection. In this business, golden opportunities turn black. You have to keep writing. There are an extraordinary number of set-backs to face. Take an inventory of your nature: where is your threshold? It's not about the one moment; it's about momentum. You have to be relentless - in a way that you're not about anything else in your life. And you do that by loving to write - so all the rejection doesn't punch a hole in you; it just makes you keep on going."

There is one other thing too. It actually COULD happen for you. It's not impossible by any means. And don't take my word for that. Look at the evidence. TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE was a spec script written by Randy Brown, which languished with no-one interested in it for 10 years, until 2012, when Clint Eastwood picked it up and made a major movie out of it. Back in 1996, Shane Black's spec script THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT sold for a mind boggling $4 million.

At the end of the day, a good idea well-written is a good idea well-written. It doesn't matter if no producer or film-maker happens to be looking for it at that moment in time. It may still find a home at some point, so it's worth doing it for that reason alone.

And if it doesn't ... or it it doesn't straight away, you've still learned something, because there's no better school of writing than actually writing - and on top of that you've got yourself a neat little calling card into the bargain.

Seriously guys, how are you better off NOT writing a spec script than writing one?

It's a no-brainer.

(Thanks to my fellow wordsmith, T.D. Edge - whose excellent website can be found HERE - for making a note of that fine Richard Christian Matheson quote back in 2013, and for granting me permission to reproduce it in this column).

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THRILLERS, CHILLERS, SHOCKERS AND KILLERS ...

An ongoing series of reviews of dark fiction (crime, thriller and horror novels) – both old and new – that I have recently read and enjoyed. I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum; there will certainly be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail, but by the definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these books in more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I particularly enjoyed … so I guess if you’d rather not know anything at all about these pieces of work in advance of reading them yourself, then these particular posts will not be your thing.


THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY  
by Simon Wood (2015)
In Simon Wood’s heart-stopping thriller, The One That Got Away, PHd student and party girl, Zoe, has some rapid-fire growing up to do when she and her best friend, Holli, are abducted outside Vegas by desert serial killer, the Tally Man. Holli dies, but though Zoe escapes, she is both physically and emotionally scarred by the event, and finds her life in ruins. In fact, it gets worse than that. With one exception, the empathetic Inspector Ryan Greening, the cops are highly sceptical – there is no evidence of the abductions and soon Zoe herself becomes a suspect in Holli’s disappearance.
At the same time, the Tally Man – a deceptively clean-cut and yet highly obsessional psychopath – is very far from being finished with her …
This novel’s greatest strength in my view is its central character. Though initially a cold and distant figure, instinctively mistrustful of all those around her, Zoe remains likeable. A former free spirit, she is distressingly damaged by her experience … so you feel for her, you empathise with her pain. But at the same time, she isn’t cowed by trauma. In fact, she is driven by it to change her life, to become a hardened survivor, and in this you cheer her – because a key theme of this book is that fighting back, while not always desirable, may sometimes be a necessity if you want to make it through (especially when, as in this case, you can find no help among the grey faces of bureaucracy that surround you).
Of course, while Zoe struggles to convince the cops that she is the victim, the real killer – cool, intelligent, resourceful and relentless – gets ever closer, finally launching a protracted and carefully planned assault by which he intends to reclaim Zoe for his collection. Tired and alone, our heroine must face and resist this deranged aggression in almost complete isolation – which, though she is no longer the panic-stricken ‘fraidy-cat she was at the beginning, is a challenge of nightmarish proportions …  
Okay, this is a straightforward and simple idea. And yes, I’ve seen it done before, though rarely as well as this. The only real problem with this novel is finding enough time in which to sit down and read it, because trust me, it’s unputdownable. It starts out at 100 mph, and maintains that rip-roaring pace all the way through, the narrative careering from one hair-raising set-piece to the next. Some minor criticisms have been levelled at it: that it doesn’t possess enough twists and turns (virtually none, if I’m honest); that any cops behaving as some of these guys do would surely lose their jobs. But hey, it’s a great read … it keeps you on the edge of your seat and keeps you turning the pages, and what else is a thriller really supposed to do?
The One That Got Away gets my strongest recommendation, though as I say it’s another one you’ll need to find time for, because once you start you won’t want to stop. 
As usual, and purely for fun, here are my picks for who should play the leads if The One That Got Away ever makes it to the screen (and in this case, I’d be surprised if that didn’t happen):
Zoe Sutton – Emilia ClarkeInspector Ryan Greening – Jared PadaleckiMarshall Beck, the Tally Man – Timothy Olyphant

A roadtrip north, with demons on my mind

I’ve recently read another awesome piece of dark fiction, THE DEMONOLOGIST by Andrew Pyper, which I’d like to bring to everyone’s attention, but you’ll find my full review of it at the lower end of this column. Scroll down now if you so wish, though if you fancy a more leisurely stroll first, here’s a quick rundown on my last couple of days, which comprised a pretty remarkable journey from bookshop to bookshop across what seemed like the whole of the England's wild north. This is not the kind of thing that happens regularly in the life of an author, but it’s certainly an experience to remember when it does …
The Great White North was the Great Green, Cork-Brown and Generally Misty North these last two days of mid-March, as I travelled uphill and down dale, ploughing back and forth between North Yorkshire, Northumbria and Cumbria in a pre-arranged quest to meet those many gallant folk who fight the good fight in the cause of that institution so beloved by so many of us, and yet probably widely underappreciated too: the small, independent bookshop.
Among other narrow, winding routes, I followed the ‘Old North Road’ (any cool fanboy types remember that old story of mine?), and crisscrossed the respective forests of Loon, Gisburn and Grizedale, and all the way called in at town and village bookstores, meeting the managers and sales staff, and signing piles of Heck novels.
The whole delightful thing was arranged for me by those kind folk at HarperCollins, who not only pre-booked the meets-and-greets, but even provided a driver for one lengthy stretch of the trip – thanks for that, Mike (did those bleak moorland roads get a bit dicey, or what?) – though I think I must have spent 12 hours at the wheel myself over the last couple of days. I was a bit stiff when I finally got home yesterday night.
The whole charabanc kicked off with a cracking event at the White Rose Book Café in Thirsk, where, in company with successful children’s author, Rob Biddulph, I met a load of local booksellers, all hugely knowledgeable and enthusiastic folk who are seriously dedicated to their trade. I was treated to a lip-smacking three-course dinner at The Black Lion (which I washed down with copious beers), made an impromptu speech – which seemed to go down okay – and then was allocated a very cosy room upstairs in a delightfully olde worlde hotel, The Golden Fleece.
The following day, we really hit the road, traversing the wildest, most windswept realms of England’s far north, skirting mountain, fell and forest, at times barely seeing another human being, but always receiving warm welcomes in those quaint little bookshops on our itinerary. In fact, at the Kendal branch of Waterstones, a customer I’d just signed a copy of HUNTED for collapsed on the spot and had an immediate epileptic fit. That’s no lie, though I don’t think it was due to the excitement of meeting me (even though she afterwards, jokily, said that it was). She recovered quickly and safely, so there was nothing to worry about.
Overall, it was an amazing couple of days. Huge thanks go to everyone who attended these events and made me feel so welcome. Off the top of my head – and I really hope I’ve not missed anyone out (please remind me if I have)! – here are some of the folk I encountered who were such good company and so interested in stocking and promoting my novels: Bookends(Carlisle and Keswick), Waterstones (Carlisle and Kendal), White Rose Books(Thirsk), Forum Books (Corbridge), the Little Ripon Bookshop (Ripon), Drake Bookshop (Stockton), the Grove Bookshop (Ilkley), Bertram Books(wholesalers), and the Booksellers Association. Thanks also to the guys at Harper who facilitated the experience: Mike, Olivia, Ben, Mick, Harriet, and Helen and Helena back in the office (as before, I sincerely hope I’ve not missed anyone out – please feel free to correct me, if I have).
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For those further interested in this type of thing, here is a blog I penned at the beginning of the month for the HarperCollins INDIE THINKING website, on the subject of small independent booksellers (in this case with a slight bias towards second-hand bookshops) and my lifelong love-affair with them …
I owe my late father a great deal, not least my love of books – which he infected me with at a very early age, but also a love of bookshops. I suppose people would expect a writer to say something like that, but for me it’s actually a very personal thing, and not just for reasons of nostalgia, though that comes into it too.
To start with, let’s tear ourselves away for a second from this current age, wherein so many of us lead such rapid-fire lives that we don’t have time to browse for books any more, but purchase our reading material online or pop distractedly into our high street chain-stores, where all the new best-sellers are arrayed in front of us on a display stand so that we can quickly grab one and be on our way again.
No, I’m talking about that other world of book-buying; that easier, gentler, more discerning world. The one I was introduced to – as I say, by my Dad – quite often while we were holidaying somewhere else in the UK, exploring quaint villages or country towns in the Lake District or the Scottish Highlands, or down in Cornwall or the Cotswolds.
It became part and parcel of those dreamy holidays, our regular visits to the many bookshops we discovered, which almost without fail were small and discreet, tucked away in cathedral mews or down the ends of harbour-side alleys. Just talking about atmospheric shops like that brings back a rush of fond memories: the clangour of the door-bell when you entered; the combined smells of dust, pipe-smoke and sun-warmed leather binding; the respectful murmur of polite enquiries at the counter; the rustle of age-yellowed pages from the browser alongside you …
That is something a great many of us have lost in these days of e-readers and orders-by-iPhone: the sheer joy of working your way along the shelves, searching through innumerable titles of a type you would rarely encounter during one of your quick-fire visits to the city centre. And it wasn’t just aesthetically pleasing; it actually paid dividends!
My personal preference is for dark and scary fiction, everything from thriller novels to collections of ghost stories. I’m a lifelong collector too; it’s been my quest of decades to create an immense library of the mysterious, the brooding and the macabre. And how often on these trips this tenacity and perseverance was rewarded – and not just in days long past.
One particularly joyous occasions in the 1990s, by which time I was grown up and had my own family, we were heading north when we happened to call in at Cartmel, a Cumbrian village famous mainly for its racecourse but also for its medieval church and its dramatic encircling fells, and on days when the race-meet is not in town, for its rapid return to the status of sleepy hamlet, when only the occasional clatter of hiking boots or lazy yapping of a dog will disturb the peace. Here, after lunching in a local pub, I followed a chalkboard sign which simply read BOOKSELLER, passed under an ivy-covered arch and at the end of a narrow passage, discovered a tiny shop with mullioned windows and an open door.
Tiny on the outside maybe, though indoors it was a virtual Tardis, seeming to physically expand as I wandered from one shelf-lined room to the next, each one crammed with books, which for once were ranked in completely comprehensible order. I found the Horror/Thriller section without difficulty, and there was blown away by the treasures on offer: Not just classics of the genre, but rarities and collectables too: authors whose work had long been discontinued by their publishers, titles that were deleted decades ago – and so many of them high on my ‘want-want-want’ list.
To start with, almost the entire series of the Pan Horror Stories occupied the top shelf. I’d been an avid hunter of these anthologies since I was far too young to legally read them. I was only a handful away from a full set. But now, in one fell swoop, I’d acquired them all. There was also a bunch of classics from the Arkham House vault, not to mention original paperback editions of two of my favourite hard-as-nails crime novels, Jack’s Return Home by Ted Lewis and Hell is a City by Maurice Procter.
What a haul that was. The first day of my holiday and I’d provided myself with a month’s worth of quality reading, and purely because I followed in the family tradition of refusing to pass the local independent bookshop without checking inside.
Sadly, that smashing little place, whose name, somewhat criminally, I have forgotten, has long ceased to trade (what a sadness it was the first day I called back there, to find it empty). But it can’t be a surprise that even today I get no end of pleasure from the same pastime: invading every little side-street bookshop I see in every new town I visit.
So what can we learn from this? Well, it’s pretty simple. Support your local booksellers. Unfortunately, they’re a tad like sunny spells – there’s never any guarantee they’re here to stay. So get through that door and ring that bell at every opportunity.
It’s not like it’ll be chore.
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THRILLERS, CHILLERS, SHOCKERS AND KILLERS ...
An ongoing series of reviews of dark fiction (crime, thriller, horror and fantasy) – both old and new – that I have recently read and enjoyed. I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum; there will certainly be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail, but by the definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these books in more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I particularly enjoyed … so I guess if you’d rather not know anything at all about these pieces of work in advance of reading them yourself, then these particular posts will not be your thing.

THE DEMONOLOGIST  by Andrew Pyper (2013)
Nothing is going right in the life of Professor David Ullman. He’s an expert in demonic literature, in particular Milton’s Paradise Lost, but he’s also an atheist, so he gets no spiritual fulfilment from this. In addition, his home life is a mess, his marriage falling apart and his 12-year-old daughter, Tess, suffering from depression. Then he learns that his best friend, Elaine O’Brien, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.
In an effort to get away from it all, Ullman accepts a curious invitation to travel to Venice and bring his expertise to bear on “a phenomenon”. Taking Tess with him, he embarks on what he hopes will be a short but welcome holiday. However, the phenomenon turns out to be the apparent and rather horrible possession of an unknown man in a dingy backstreet house. Bewildered and distressed, Ullman returns to his hotel, only to find Tess in a similar condition, standing on the roof. Before he can intervene, she throws herself into the Grand Canal, screaming two words: “Find me!”
When the police search, no body is recovered. But Ullman saw the incident with his own eyes, and is certain his daughter is dead. He returns to the States, devastated, but soon embarks on a mission to learn more about the evil spirit he confronted in that grubby old house.
So begins a journey from religious denial to religious conviction for David Ullman. And it’s a very arduous journey indeed, a demonic entity that he’s only previously encountered in fictional work leading him from pillar to post across North America with a series of complex clues. It’s also a journey he must make with an extremely dangerous man on his heels, a proficient killer who calls himself ‘George Barone’ after a famous Mafia hitman. Whoever this guy really is and whoever’s paid him to pursue Ullman are details that remain elusive for the time-being. All that matters initially is Ullman surviving and unravelling the devilish puzzle that has been laid in front of him in the seemingly vain hope that, at the end of it all, he might find Tess, and that she might – just might! – still be alive …
In some ways, The Demonologist is more like a road trip than a horror novel, but be under no illusions. For all its arthouse trappings, it is a horror novel, and in some ways a very traditional one. It’s not even low on gore – there are killings aplenty, while the demon, when it appears, will be very familiar in its motives and manners to those imagined by orthodox religious folk.
And ultimately, at least at subtext level, that’s what this is all about: a soul’s voyage from darkness to light. It’s been suggested that in some ways it mirrors Satan’s journey in Paradise Lost; he too clawed his agonising way out of the pit, though in his case there was no chance of redemption at the end.  
David Ullman is a strange kind of hero – somewhat stiff, somewhat stuffy, quite superior on some occasions, and yet vulnerable and uncertain in others (he’s been dealt a pretty crappy hand, after all!), and for much of the time in this book, he’s terrified, relying on intellect rather than raw courage. For all that, he’s a nice guy in his odd, introspective way. So you can’t help but root for him along every inch of his difficult path.
I personally wasn’t terrified by The Demonologist, even though I first noticed it in various ‘top 10 scariest novels’ lists. But I was intrigued and pleasantly unnerved (the hitman is in many ways your very worst nightmare – an utterly cold, completely unemotional professional murderer), and once I got into it, I found it a damn good read. It’s taut, tense, and while it might not keep you awake at night, it will certainly keep you turning the pages.
As usual, just for fun, here are my picks for who should play the leads if The Demonologist someday makes it to the screen (I’ve heard that a movie version is in development, but we’ll have to wait and see):
Professor David Ullman – Brian CranstonElaine O’Brien – Mayim BialikGeorge Barone – Viggo Mortensen
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At the risk of making myself look less heroic and melodramatic, that pic at the top of this column is sadly not a shot of my good self striking  a 'lord of all I survey' pose on the edge of a typically dark and silent northern lake, but Heck from the cover of HUNTED . For those interested, that image was originally going to be part of the cover for DEAD MAN WALKING  the fourth Heck novel, the one actually set in the Lake District ... but for some reason it was pushed back to the fifth and most recent in the series.

The Bookends picture is by Kenneth Allen, the Little Ripon shot used by courtesy of the Little Ripon Bookshop.

Murderous mutterings: the city and the sea

Well ... NOIR AT THE BAR at Carlisle last week was a fantastic occasion.
I felt hugely honoured to be invited to participate in the first of these remarkable events ever to be held in England. On arrival, it was no surprise to find myself on the podium (so to speak) with some serious British crime-writing talent, but I was totally blown away by the huge and enthusiastic attendance by local crime fans.
More about  NOIR AT THE BAR  in a minute, but first a quick note to the effect that my detailed review of Frank De Felitta's terrifying SEA TRIAL can be found at the lower end of this column, so just scroll down to it when you get tired of my usual blather.

Now, back to  NOIR AT THE BAR . For those interested, by origin this is an American institution first pioneered by crime blogger Pete Rozovsky (of  DETECTIVES BEYOND BORDERS) in Philadelphia back in 2008 (as shown above), and finally brought to the UK in June last year, when the inaugural event was organised by Brit crime writers, JAY STRINGER and RUSSEL D. McLEAN , in Glasgow.
In concept, it's not especially radical, but it is a tad unnerving: a gang of crime and thriller writers pick a public bar on a specific night, and gather there in the beer fumes and the low-key lighting and, when they are able to call the general clientele to order (folk who can gain admittance free-of-charge and without tickets!), read out selected extracts from their latest works.

The readings can be anything of the writers' choice, but almost invariably the guys and girls in the spotlight go for the moodiest, darkest and, well ... the most noirish thing they have penned.

I was amazed when I first heard about this. I thought: "Suppose there are disturbances caused by drunks? Suppose the local bar-flies just don't want it and get irritable?" But that is the whole point.  NOIR AT THE BAR  is about edgy stuff: this is crime fiction at its hardest; volatile characters in a dangerous world of rain-wet streets, broken neon signs fizzling on and off, menacing shapes lurking under dripping archways, etc ... 

It takes a bit more planning than all this, of course. You can't just turn up at a pub and expect everyone to drop what they're doing. It needs to be prearranged, and in the case of the Carlisle  NOIR AT THE BAR , the plaudits for this must go to three hardened crime-writers in their own right, the legendary trio, Crime Ink-Corporated: MATT HILTON,  GRAHAM SMITH  and MIKE CRAVEN (all pictured here).

The venue was the MOO BAR , smack in Carlisle city centre; a real 'spit-and-sawdust' place, as we used to refer to them, with an enormous range of real ales on offer, a bunch of very hard-working staff, and, as I said before, a smashing crowd, who packed it to the outer doors and remained rapt through every reading. 

The organisers were subsequently delighted with the way the evening went, and rightly so. It was tremendously successful. I shared the platform with some amazing fellow crime-scribes: ZOE SHARP , NEIL WHITE , DAVID MARK , JAMES HILTON , LUCY CAMERON , TESS MAKOVESKY and  JAY STRINGER . The line-up also included LINDA WRIGHT , who was the official 'wild card' reader. This latter is a very neat idea, which on each occasion will see a local amateur crime-writer drawn from a hat and invited to pariticpate. Linda more than held her own, but I think each one of us gave it everything we had, every presenation ending on a high note, with cheers and clapping from the gathered crowd. 

There was no particular order of play. We were drawn in lots from David Mark's ever reliable flat cap, and I found myself second-from-last. My chosen extract came from the most recent Heck novel, HUNTED , a sequence which saw Heck snare a Nottingham murder suspect by playing a very nasty trick on him at the back of his girlfriend's run-down council flat. 

I wasn't sure whether this would be the best plan - mainly because this chapter was already in the public domain having been put out by Avon as a taster before  HUNTED  was even published. But I needn't have worried. The attendance was hugely warm and appreciative. So good was the atmosphere that I didn't even feel vaguely nervous as I stepped up to the microphone (I mean, you can see how relaxed I am here ... honest).

Overall, it was a great event. As I say, it's the first one ever to be held in England, and a very worthy start to what will hopefully be an ongoing series of such entertainments. I was so inspired that it occurred to me to try and mount one in Wigan. We are close to Manchester and Liverpool here, and have no shortage of crime-writing talent in this vicinity.

So this is the question ...

Can we do a  NOIR AT THE BAR  here in Wigan? I'll be giving it some thought, but feel free to have your own say in the Comments box below.

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THRILLERS, CHILLERS, SHOCKERS AND KILLERS ...
A new series of reviews of dark fiction (crime, thriller, horror, fantasy and sci-fi novels) – both old and new – that I have recently read and enjoyed. I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum; there will certainly be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail, but by the definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these books in more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I particularly enjoyed … so I guess if you’d rather not know anything at all about these pieces of work in advance of reading them, then these particular posts will not be your thing.

SEA TRIAL  by Frank De Felitta (1980)
When adulterous businessman, Phil Sobel, and his married mistress, Tracey, embark on a secret boat trip to the Caribbean, they anticipate it will be the holiday of a lifetime. But they have no concept of the horrors ahead.
Rather than taking an official cruise, Phil and Tracey opt for a private charter run by a Florida couple, Captain Jack McCracken and his almost impossibly hospitable wife, Penny, who, as well as their luxurious motor-yacht (the amusingly named Penny Dreadful) also guarantee excellent seamanship and gourmet cooking.
Everything seems perfect. Captain Jack is a slightly odd fish – a bit distant, a bit philosophical, and he plays up outrageously to his self-image as a salty seadog. But Penny is very capable and can’t do enough for her guests, the sun is blazing and the sea that shimmering ‘swimming pool’ blue, so there’s no reason at all to assume this’ll be anything other than a luxurious experience.
Phil and Tracey feel they’ve finally got away from the stresses and strains of their deceitful life in New York
But only a couple of days in, things start going wrong: minor accidents and malfunctions, which gradually impinge on the couple’s enjoyment. In addition, the further they draw from land, the more their relationship with their hosts subtly changes. At first this is driven by necessity, the yacht’s systems failing and everyone having to pull their weight. But in a short time, Phil and Tracey are being treated less like paying customers on the boat and more like employees, and underpaid, ill-treated employees at that.
And of course by now there is no sign of land, and the two lubbers don’t have the first clue where they are …
If you’re a fan of both sea horrors and psycho thrillers, you can’t do much better than Sea Trial. Okay, it’s an old novel, one that’s been swimming around in the back of my awareness for several decades, and which for some unfathomable reason (alright, enough puns!) I’d failed to take a chance on. Well, now I have – and I’m very glad.
It’s a simple enough yarn, following a very basic premise – innocent couple get lured far from their comfort zone by the falsely charming, and are then plunged into a web of insanity. But it’s written in absorbing fashion, relying initially on brief but ominous hints that things may not be all they seem, and once the downward tilt towards disaster finally begins, accelerating to a rollicking pace, the fear and agony poured on unrelentingly.
De Felitta also achieves the near impossible by transforming the beautiful and serene Carribean Sea – and it never changes from that, there’s rarely a cloud in the sky – into a metamophorical desert where all hopes of rescue and salvation are repeatedly dashed.
This book is also a masterclass in the creation of understated villainy. Fictional baddies who roar and bellow don’t impress me much. Likewise, baddies who scream abuse as they brutalise, or baddies who cackle insanely. You don’t get any of that here. Nontheless, this is terrorising ordeal for the hapless victims caught up in it. How frail we ordinary humans sometimes are when confronted by monsters of the realistic variety. How weak we appear when straying only a few nautical miles from our orderly world and finding ourselves in the realm of savages …  
As always, just for a bit of a laugh, here are my picks for who should play the leads if Sea Trial someday makes it to the screen (I believe Tom Selleck was once lined up for a TV movie version, but whether that ever happened, I’m not sure):
Phil Sobel – John HammTracey Hansen – Holliday GraingerJack McCracken – Iain GlenPenny McCracken – Rachel McAdams