Mark West's Blog, page 10

Ten Favourite Covers: The Three Investigators

Regular readers of the blog will know I'm a big fan of The Three Investigators series (I wrote a Nostalgic post about them, on the 50th anniversary in 2014, which you can read here) and am an avid collector of the various editions.

Since they were published over a long period of time, the books appeared in different formats.  Format a, which was printed between 1970 and 1979, coincided with me

Christmas Wishes, by Sue Moorcroft

Regular blog readers will know I've been friends with Sue Moorcroft for a while, having met at the Kettering Writers Group in 1999 (the group leader was of a more literary bent, so we genre writers were consigned to the back of the room, where we had great fun).  Since then she's gone from strength to strength, hitting number one in the Kindle Bestseller charts (with The Christmas Promise), 

A Wing And A Prayer, by M W Arnold

To mark the publication of his new novel, A Wing And A Prayer, my friend Mick Arnold contributes this guest blog about the origins of his book.The Air Transport Auxiliary Mystery Club!Four ladies of the Air Transport Auxiliary bond over solving the mystery of who was responsible for the death of one’s sister. Battling both internal forces and those of the country’s mutual enemies, the women find

Even More Look-In Cover Art

Look-In, 'The Junior TV Times', was a much loved magazine of my childhood (I wrote a Nostalgia post about it in 2016), which helped develop my love for The Six Million Dollar Man, Blondie and behind-the-scenes stuff, amongst other things.  It also featured painted covers, mostly by Arnaldo Putzu, an Italian artist working in London who made his name creating cinema posters for the likes of

Ten Past Three - A Portuguese Ghost Story

I've discussed this incident on the blog before but with Halloween coming up - and the fact that it happened 30 years ago this August - I thought it worth another mention.  I adore the horror genre but I'm relatively rational and, like everyone else, I've often placated my son when he's scared with the phrase "there's nothing there."

But what if there is?


Me and Craig, Cabo da Roca, Portugal.

The Mystery Of The Silver Spider, by Robert Arthur

2014 marked the fiftieth anniversary of The Three Investigators being published and, to celebrate, I re-read and compiled my all-time Top 10 (safe in the knowledge that it would be subject to change in years to come, of course).  I posted my list here, having previously read all 30 of the original series from 2008 to 2010 (a reading and reviewing odyssey that I blogged here).

Following this, I

Just Keep Walking, by INXS, at 40

Forty years ago, INXS released their second single to help promote their debut album in October 1980.


Just Keep Walking was written by the band as a whole (a credit tactic their manager Chris Murphy suggested), backed with Scratch and released in Australia and New Zealand in October 1980 and in the UK, by RCA, in May 1981.  It was the only single release from the album and would eventually

Bullet Comic Art

My collection of Bullet comics is slowly growing and I'm thoroughly enjoying the process, picking copies up from here and there.  I found a copy on ebay this week and it occured to me that it's been a while since I showcased some of the covers on the blog.



Bullet, my favourite comic growing up (I wrote a retrospective on it here), was launched by D. C. Thomson on 9th February 1976.  ‘Packed

FantasyCon Memories

This past weekend should have seen FantasyCon 2020 take place in London but, due to Covid-19, it was understandably cancelled.  Absolutely the right decision but it meant a lot of us missed out on one of the few chances we get in a year to catch up, in real life and in living colour, with our writing friends, a weekend full of chatter (books, writing and general bollocks), laughter and eating.

Dark Forces edited by Kirby McCauley at 40

On 18th September 1980, Macdonald Futura published Dark Forces as a hardback in the UK, a horror anthology that turned out to ground-breaking in a variety of ways, not least for helping open the door to the horror boom that followed in the decade.


Futura paperback, 1986 editioncover scan of my copy

It all started when Kirby McCauley went to dinner with Anthony Cheetham, the publisher of Futura