Tiny Birthday No. 20

I decided to count this month's Abominable Book Club subscription box as a tiny birthday, since it's a present I got myself. This month's box included I've got Paul Tremblay's The Pallbearers Club and a copy of The Ghastling, plus popcorn, bookmarks, a sticker and a Slimer pin. In a bit of a genre switch, my mystery bonus book this month was In the Dark by Cara Hunter.

(This is how I'm celebrating my birthday this year - see here for the reasons why.)

My Year in Books 2021: December

And so onto my final book round-up post of the year. As promised, there are more books on it than last month's... but it's not like there could've been less! I mostly read seasonal/festive stuff in December (as usual), and I have to admit I feel a bit flat about this selection. I only read one novel in December that I would say I loved. Most of the others were a bit meh. Ah well... maybe next year will have something a bit more exciting in store.

In case you're interested, here are my other posts from the rest of the year: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton (2018)

Do I like Agatha Christie novels? Yes. Do I like the film Triangle? Yes. Do I like the film Cube? Yes. Did I ever imagine I would find a novel that somehow combined these three things. Erm… no, of course I didn’t; that’d be impossible. Imagine my surprise when I discovered it wasn’t impossible, and that The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle really does combine elements reminiscent of all three. It’s hard to explain the book without giving too much away. I went into it pretty blind – just a cursory glance at the blurb, no other knowledge – and it was an absolute joy when it started to dawn on me what might be going on. I was so excited by the book’s premise that I almost missed my tram stop on two different occasions. Suffice to say, the book opens with a man coming to in a forest. He has no memory of who he is or where he is, but the first thing he sees is a woman he thinks is called Anna being murdered. He’s given a compass and told to head east, and eventually he stumbles onto a dilapidated old country house where a group of people are gathered for a party. Apparently he’s one of the guests, but he doesn’t recognize anyone. And no one’s taking his concern for Anna very seriously. To be honest, I was hooked by this point, but this is only the opener. In case it isn’t obvious, I loved this book.

The Invisible Host (aka The Ninth Guest) by Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning (1930)

Do I like Agatha Christie novels? Yes. I think that should be patently clear by now. I am particularly fond of And Then There Were None, and at the beginning of the year I read a series of recent novels that use the same premise as Christie’s novel. I’ve been saving The Invisible Host for a while, as this is also a book that uses the same premise as And Then There Were None, but – plot twist – it was published before Christie’s novel. Was it the inspiration for the more famous book? Did Agatha steal the idea from the earlier work? I’ve been intrigued (and nervous) about finding out. Well… here goes… there are undoubtedly a lot of similarities between the two books. The Invisible Host sees a disparate group of people invited to a fancy house party in a New Orleans penthouse apartment. After food is served by a butler who claims not to know who their host is, the doors are locked and an ominous voice addresses the party from a radio. They are going to die, one by one, unless they can work out how to win ‘the game’. The book starts off wonderfully, with a great sense of atmosphere and setting (and some flourishes are reminiscent of the Saw films, which I enjoyed). But, ultimately, it doesn’t really go anywhere. The characters are a bit flat, and the big reveal is lacklustre and not particularly surprising. I have to be honest here: Agatha did it better.

The Z Murders by J. Jefferson Fargeon (1932)

Do I like Agatha… well, I think you get the picture. After I finished The Invisible Host, it struck me that I had another book on my to-read pile with a similar vibe. The Z Murders was published several years before Christie’s The ABC Murders but, as the title indicates, it has a lot in common with the later book. The Z Murders – like most of Fargeon’s crime fiction – had fallen into relative obscurity until its recent republication as part of the British Library Crime Classics series. You may remember from previous posts, my mother-in-law has been steadily buying me an impressive collection of the BL books for birthdays and Christmases, and so I thought it was time to give this one a try. The Z Murders – much like The ABC Murders – is a serial killer thriller, rather than a classic whodunnit. And more specifically – much like Christie’s book – it’s about a serial killer who leaves a calling card with an alphabetical flavour. In this case, it’s an enamelled letter ‘Z’ left by the bodies, the only thing that links the seemingly unconnected victims and locations. The protagonist is Richard Temperley, who stumbles into the first murder after disembarking a train at Euston station and who – for reasons that remain a little fuzzy – embroils himself in the chase to catch the (rather unsettling) killer. There’s a lot of atmosphere and tension here, but the story isn’t quite as gripping as I’d hoped. Turns out, once again, Agatha did it better.

I Saw Him Die by Andrew Wilson (2020)

I’m not even going to start this one with a question. I like Agatha Christie books, and I assume that’s why my mother-in-law bought me I Saw Him Die for my birthday this year. This isn’t a book by Christie, but rather one that features her as a character. Last year, I read a book by Nicola Upson, in which the crime novelist Josephine Tey was the main character. I’m not convinced this is my favourite subgenre of mystery novels, but given the way this month’s reading was going, I thought it was the right time to try I Saw Him Die. In Wilson’s novel, Christie is on holiday on the Isle of Skye ahead of her upcoming marriage to Max Mallowan. She’s asked by a friend in the Secret Intelligence Service to give up part of her holiday to investigate threats made to a former agent who lives on the island. No sooner have they arrived than the man is murdered, and an apparent allusion to the nursery rhyme ‘Who Killed Cock Robin?’ suggests a potential suspect. I’ll just be honest here and say that this one didn’t do it for me. I’m not sure why Agatha Christie had to be used as a character, as the story could’ve been told with an entirely fictional investigator. I also found it a bit repetitive with constant recaps that added little to the mystery and slowed the pace down. With this one, I have to say… Agatha would’ve done it better.

Cornish Short Stories, edited by Felicity Notley and Emma Timpany (2018)

Time to change the pace a bit now. This is a book I actually bought two years ago. We normally go on holiday to Cornwall every December, and at the end of our 2019 holiday I bought this book to save for the following year. Of course, the following year’s holiday didn’t happen, so it’s been waiting patiently ever since. I took this collection on holiday this year as I really wanted to read it in the right setting. All the writers in the book have some connection to Cornwall – either through birth, upbringing or residence – and all of the stories are set in the county. As you might expect, it’s a varied collection, with different takes on the setting and different styles of writing. Interestingly, there is some consistency of tone across the collection with a number of the stories having a wistful or melancholy quality that I wasn’t expecting. As with all multi-author collections, there were some stories I liked more than others. But this is a matter of personal taste, so I imagine other readers will have different preferences. Overall, though, the collection does do a good job of conjuring up a sense of place. Yes, there are the expected beaches (occasionally busy with tourists), but there’s also a real sense of the wide emptiness of the Cornish landscape and the strong connection to nature that you can’t help but feel when you visit Cornwall. And I’m glad I saved this one to read on our holiday!

A Christmas Railway Mystery by Edward Marston (2017)

Earlier this year, I was in the Air Ambulance shop in Bakewell, and I witnessed an older lady very aggressively shopping for Edward Marston books (pushing other customers out of the way, demanding volunteers search for other titles for her). It was the quite the show, and quite the introduction to Marston’s fiction (or, perhaps, his readership). I’m not a huge fan of historical fiction, but somehow I ended up with two copies of this one to read during our December holiday. The first I bought in 2019 to save for our next Cornwall holiday, as I like to have festive fiction to read while we’re away. The second was a surprise – I bought two mystery books from The Works just before we went away, each wrapped in Christmas paper and with a teaser blurb written by a member of staff. The one for this one read: ‘A man with a missing head. Christmas approaching. Will Santa bring it back again?’ Turns out, that’s a bit of a misleading blurb! Christmas 1860 is definitely approaching in A Christmas Railway Mystery, but the man with a missing head is actually a mutilated corpse discovered at the Swindon Locomotive works! Marston’s Railway Detective, Inspector Colbeck, is called away from his family to investigate. I’d say, on reflection, the book has much more ‘railway’ than ‘Christmas’, but that’s sort of what I expected. The mystery is okay, but I think you probably read this one for the historical setting rather than the puzzle.

The Cottage by Lisa Stone (2021)

Another one I read while we were away, and a bit of an impulse buy. Our December holiday is in an isolated cottage, so I thought it might be fun to read a creepy thriller set in an isolated cottage! The blurb on this one suggested an atmospheric tale of a woman who rents the titular cottage on the edge of a forest and is soon disturbed by strange noises in the night. Unfortunately, that’s not really what this one’s about. There’s a bit of description of the cottage, but it’s not as atmospheric as I was hoping. Much of the storyline revolves around a seemingly unrelated (though it all comes together in the end) plot about a midwife and a fertility clinic. It wasn’t really a surprise that the author has also written in the ‘difficult lives’ genre (sometimes known as misery lit), as this is very much the style of writing here. That’s not really my sort of thing, so I found it quite hard to lose myself in the story here. I’m not sure what to make of the plot either, as it seemed a bit farfetched to me and some of the character motivations were rather hard to believe. I think this is one that was mis-marketed, in all honesty. It’s packaged as a creepy thriller – the title and cover lead you to believe it’s going to be all spooky shenanigans at a lonely cottage – but that’s not quite what you get when you read it.

The Christmas Egg by Mary Kelly (1958)

The last book I read this month was the one I read over Christmas itself, and I generally like to choose something appropriately festive as a Yuletide read. I’d got a couple of Christmas-themed British Library Crime Classics saved, but I decided to read this one as it’s a novel rather than a collection of short stories. As Martin Edwards’s excellent (as always) introduction explains, The Christmas Egg is a rather off-beat mystery novel, as it’s not quite a whodunnit and not quite a police procedural. As with a lot of the Crime Classics, the author isn’t particularly well-known now, but I enjoyed learning a bit about her and her writing career in the introduction. The Christmas Egg is set – surprisingly enough – in the days before Christmas (it’s split over three days, with the climax coming at Christmas Eve), and it follows the investigation into the death of an old Russian aristocrat, a survivor of the revolution who’s been living in somewhat refined squalor in London. The detective here is Kelly’s short-term series detective Brett Nightingale, who combines being a police inspector with his love of opera. I enjoyed the book’s depiction of the bustle of Christmas, and there’s a brilliant description of London preparing for the festive season at the start of the book. I also liked the victim’s backstory and the way that was revealed. The third part of the novel – when Nightingale tracked down the crooks – dragged a little for me, but otherwise I enjoyed this one.

My Year in Books 2021: November

I'm a little bit late posting this one, and there's only one book on the list this month. Ah well... I'm sure I'll read more in December!

In case you're interested, here are my posts from the rest of the year: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October

The Beresford by Will Carver (2021)

The next book I read was another from my Abominable Books pile. I’d previously received Carver’s Hinton Hollow Death Trip in one of my boxes – in fact it was the featured book in my first ever box – and I quite enjoyed it, despite having some small criticisms. So I thought I knew what I was getting with Carver’s latest novel, but it was the blurb that really enticed me. The ‘Beresford’ of the title is an idiosyncratic hotel that’s seen better days. Run by enigmatic landlady Mrs May, The Beresford is now divided up into apartments. The tenants come and go – and how this happens is sort of the story’s main focus. Tenants arrive and stay until they are eventually murdered by one of the others; each time a death takes place, the killer has just sixty seconds to hide the body before the doorbell rings to signal a new arrival. The premise of this one is amazing, and I thought it would be right up my street. Sadly, the execution wasn’t quite to my taste. The brilliant setting is woefully underused – the entire story focuses on the four flats on the ground and first floors, and we only get a very brief glimpse of the much more interesting floors above. Each of the murders/body disposals is told in a lot of detail, and after a while it feels quite repetitive. Ultimately, the story felt like it could’ve been a lot shorter and it fell a little flat for me.

My Year in Books 2021: October

I'm a bit late posting this one, and there are only two books on it. I had a bit of a busy October, and November's shaping up to be even more so, so I'm afraid I haven't had a lot of time for reading.

In case you're interested, here are my reviews for the rest of the year: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September

And here are the two books I read in October...

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix (2021)

As it was my big Halloween month in October, I thought it’d be appropriate to read some books from my ever-towering Abominable Books pile (which I’m still behind with – of course). Maybe it’s because I read and watch horror all year round, but not ever horror book feels Halloweeny to me, so I wanted to choose the right ones. The first one I picked was The Final Girl Support Group, because slasher films definitely feel Halloweeny to me! And Hendrix’s novel is a real love letter to the slasher subgenre. The book’s premise is that a group of women who have all survived horrific and media-grabbing massacres have formed a support group to deal with their trauma. The women and their respective battles – with possibly one exception – are modelled on characters from classic slasher films, and indeed within the world of the novel they have each seen their stories fictionalized into film franchises. Part of the fun of the early part of the book is working out which real-life franchise has inspired each of Hendrix’s characters, and how that has affected the women they’ve become in later life. But there’s a whole other story here as well… the book opens with the news that a member of the support group has been murdered in yet another massacre. When other members of the group start to be targeted, Lynette (the novel’s central character) believes that someone is trying to wipe out the final girls. It’s a great book – definitely recommend it.

My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones (2021)

I decided to carry on with the slasher theme. I got Jones’s My Heart is a Chainsaw in my October Abominable Books box, and it seemed like a good pairing with The Final Girl Support Group. But although they share a real affection for slasher films, these are two very different books. Jones’s novel focuses on Jade Daniels, a young woman obsessed with slasher films. Jade is half-Native American and lives with her dad after her mum walked out on them. She’s an outcast – considered a bit weird by most – and she works as a janitor at the high school from where she (only just) graduates. She spends a lot of time watching horror films, and a lot writing ‘extra credit’ essays about slashers for her history teacher. When a body is found in the lake, Jade convinces herself that a slasher is stalking their small town, and that her horror viewing has prepared her for this eventuality. She knows what’s about to transpire, and she knows she needs to find the final girl to defeat the monster. This appears in the form of Letha Mondragon, a beautiful and wealthy new arrival at the school. I should say, My Heart is a Chainsaw is much more than a slasher or a treatise on the slasher. Jade is fascinating and compelling character. Although the book’s in third person, we follow things from Jade’s unreliable (or maybe frustrating) perspective, and I loved this. Come for the slashers, but stay for Jade Daniels!

31 Days of Halloween: Day 9

My month of Halloween continues! I've done a few seasonally spooky things today, so it's a little bit of a longer post this time.

Haunted Whisky Tasting

Tonight I did a haunted distilleries whisky tasting with my husband and my brother. I found five ghost stories about distilleries, and chose a whisky from each of those distilleries (from Master of Malt) that Rob and James tasted blind (I also tried the whiskies, though I had the background info of course). All they had to do was match up the whiskies with the ghosts. Unfortunately, they didn't do too well at identifying either the distilleries or the ghosts, but we still really enjoyed drinking five excellent drams! Oh, and we also had some Halloween crackers to set the mood for the night!

Abominable Books

Cheating a bit with this one, as I do it every month... I have a subscription to the Abominable Book Club, a monthly horror book subscription box. October's box arrived today, so I got to do my regular unboxing (and I like to take my time over this). And woohoo! lots of goodies this month! I've got My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones and Six Rooms by Gemma Amor, plus some chocolate ginger biscuits and a Pinhead pin! And my mystery book this month was... The Uninvited! It's apparently the novelization of ITV's chilling new (1997) series starring Douglas Hodge & Leslie Grantham, from the producers of Hamish Macbeth!

Snail

Not the most Halloween-y thing, but I think it still counts. I spotted this snail on a litter-pick in Boggart Hole Clough this morning. I don't know if I'm including it for the snail or the fact that Boggart Hole Clough is an inherently Halloween-themed place!

Today's Story

Today's story was 'The Bird' by Thomas Burke. Did not expect the direction this dark little tale took at all.

Today's Tea

Today's tea was Enchanted Narnia from Bird and Blend Tea Co., which promised to be a Turkish Delight-inspired brew. It's certainly packed with rosebuds! But I've got to admit, the cocoa and lemongrass came through much stronger than the rose flavour. It was very light as well. I might brew the next cup a bit stronger to see if it's rosier!

My Year in Books 2021: July

Time for my monthly round-up of the books I've read for pleasure recently, and once again it's a short post. My to-read pile is getting dangerously tall, so hopefully I'll be able to catch-up a bit and have more to share next month.

In case you're interested, here are my posts from the rest of the year: January, February, March, April, May, June

And here are the books I read in July...

Bone Harvest by James Brogden (2020)

The first book on this month’s list was very nearly the final book on last month’s. It’s another from my Abominable Books pile, and it’s another bit of surprise folk horror. I don’t know why, but I had it in my head that this was another American novel (this is what comes of my resistance to reading blurbs before I start reading!). In fact, Bone Harvest is set in the UK, mostly around the English-Welsh border and then in Staffordshire. And I’ll say right off – I loved this one, despite not being the world’s biggest folk horror fan. The story begins with an unnamed man deserting in the trenches of WWI (he continues to be technically unnamed throughout the book, though he adopts the name Everett from some stolen dog tags). As the deserter moves amongst the carnage of the war, he meets with the ‘No Men’ and is introduced to the religion of Moccus, a pre-Christian deity whose followers consume their god’s flesh in a cyclical ritual. When he returns to the UK, the deserter seeks out those followers and becomes an acolyte of Moccus. The first half (roughly) of the novel was really striking and totally unsettling, and I was fascinated by the deserter as a character. However, the book really comes into its own in the second half as we move into the present day and to a wonderful setting for folk horror: allotments. This one is a real page-turner with a rich story and excellent characterization.

Sealand: The True Story of the World's Most Stubborn Micronation by Dylan Taylor-Lehman (2020)

I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole earlier this year. When Prince Phillip was first taken to hospital, I noticed a number of strange Twitter accounts sending him their (rather formal) regards. Each account looked like an ‘official’ account of an embassy or other state functionary, complete with crests or other state insignia, but all of them had names that were nothing like any country I’d ever seen before. Intrigued, I looked one of the names up and discovered it was the name of a micronation: a small ‘country’, founded by an individual, with claims of sovereign identity despite existing within the boundaries of another country’s territory. I started reading about the history and theory behind micronations – from the serious attempts at secession (sometimes for tax purposes) to the more frivolous home-based projects – and I couldn’t help but notice the name ‘Sealand’ kept popping up. And with good reason, it turns out. Sealand is one of the longest-standing, but also (arguably) the most successful micronation. Founded in 1967 on a disused naval fort off the coast at Southend, Sealand is a ‘principality’ ruled by an eccentric ‘royal family’ who have seen off numerous attempts to usurp them over the years. Taylor-Lehman’s book takes us through the hilarious, terrifying and occasionally downright unbelievable story of the Bates family and their concrete micronation. I can’t do justice to how bonkers the story is – and I’d definitely recommend reading the book to learn more. It’s even stranger than you might think.

The Madman's Library: The Strangest Books, Manuscripts and Other Literary Curiosities from History by Edward Brooke-Hitching (2020)

I read a review of The Madman’s Library in the Manchester Review of Books earlier this year, and I knew it would be right up my street. Interestingly, I’d bought a copy of one of the author’s other books – The Phantom Atlas – as a birthday present for my brother, but I didn’t realize it was by the same author until I was part way through The Madman’s Library. We’re going to do a swap, so I might write about The Phantom Atlas in the future. For now… The Madman’s Library is a beautifully illustrated coffee-table-type book about curiosities from the world of literature. Some of these are well-known – the Voynich manuscript gets some attention, as does the Codex Gigas (aka the Devil’s Bible) – but there’s an absolute wealth of other, more obscure stories here that are a delight to dip into. Some books are just bizarre or baffling, but others reveal a lot about the history of literature, writing and bookbinding. Most of the books discussed are unique (in one way or another) artifacts, so this isn’t a timeline of the development of the book. It’s arranged thematically rather than chronologically so you can dip in and out of different types of strangeness (one grisly chapter looks at ‘Books of Flesh and Blood’, for instance, and another ‘Cryptic Books’). I personally enjoyed ‘Literary Hoaxes’, many of which were new to me. This one is a strong recommendation for people interested in the weirder side of the history of the book.

My Year in Books 2021: June

Time for my monthly round-up of the books I read for pleasure last month. Only three books on this list this time. I am about two-thirds of the way through a book I'm really enjoying, but I didn't quite finish it in time to include it in this month's post. I guess it'll have to wait until July. For now, here are my mini-reviews of the books I actually finished in June.

In case you're interested, here are my reviews from previous months: January, February, March, April, May

Madam by Phoebe Wynne (2021)

A while ago, I signed up for something called Secret Readers from Hachette. It seemed to be a project where readers were given access to read an eBook (either pre- or post-publication) so that they could give some feedback afterwards. It was advertised as ‘get a free eBook’, but it was obviously more about gathering reviews and responses to recent titles. Either way, I didn’t hear anything back for them for a while, and then when I did I couldn’t work out how to access/read the ‘free eBook’. Out of the blue, I got an email from them this month offering me a choice of three titles, so I thought I might give it another go. I chose Madam, and I read it on the rather frustrating browser version of the proprietary e-reader (but I’m not reviewing that, so I’ll let that go). Madam is set in the early 1990s. A young Classics teacher called Rose is offered a job at a prestigious girls’ boarding school. When she gets there, it quickly becomes apparent that there’s something quite quite wrong at Caldonbrae Hall. While there are shades of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and also of Carol Goodman’s The Lake of Dead Languages (which I read that last year), the plot also bears some similarities with Never Let Me Go. However, while Madam has its charms, the revelations are a bit implausible here, and I’m not a fan of vague shadowy organizations with inexplicable omnipotence. Not a strong recommendation.

The Apartment by K.L. Slater (2020)

And now another book that I read because I was offered a free eBook (okay, not strictly ‘free’, but included with my Prime membership). The Apartment looked to be fairly standard domestic noir stuff: Freya Miller and her young daughter are looking for somewhere to live, when a chance encounter in a coffee shop brings her an offer of an unbelievably cheap apartment for rent. Is this offer too good to be true? Of course it is. Will that encounter turn out to have been less of a chance? Of course it will. I started this one thinking I might quite like it, but I’m afraid it wore thin rather quickly. Freya makes a lot of very silly decisions – even by the standards of the genres – and her daughter is the least convincing five-year-old ever. A couple of the other tenants in the strange apartment block are curiously engaging, but it’s just quite hard to buy into the protagonist’s predicament. I had an uneasy feeling from the start of this one that the big reveal was going to be implausible – and that turned out to be the case. Again, even by the standards of the subgenre, I struggled to believe in what was revealed. It’s a bit of a shame, because the set-up is pretty intriguing, and there were some aspects of the creepy apartment building that did capture my interest. Overall, though, this one was a bit of a disappointment. I should probably avoid free eBooks for a while.

The House of a Hundred Whispers by Graham Masterton (2020)

Leaving aside the free eBooks, I turned back to my sometimes-neglected Abominable Books pile. The House of a Hundred Whispers was one of the recent featured books (I think it might have been in last month’s parcel). From the blurb, it looked like a haunted house story set on Dartmoor. And I guess it is a haunted house story set on Dartmoor… but it’s also something else (and it’s not your average haunting either). The book begins with the death of Herbert Russell, former governor of Dartmoor Prison. His estranged children arrive at Allhallows Hall, Russell’s rambling Tudor mansion, to attend the reading of his will. The will holds some surprises for the family, but there are more shocks to come when Herbert’s grandson Timmy disappears, and the family starts to realize that there’s something not right at Allhallows Hall. As I say, this isn’t your average haunted house. I liked the reveal of what is haunting the house, and the deeper story of how and why it’s happening is well-done. But what I really enjoyed was the sense of place, story and history that imbue Masterton’s version of Dartmoor. My only real criticism here is that the characters and their motivations sometimes strain credibility a little – I couldn’t always believe their reactions to the building horror. Some of the characters (particularly the police who are searching for Timmy) are a bit quick to swallow the Russells’ tales of supernatural occurrences at the house! Overall, though, I enjoyed this one.

My Year in Books 2021: May

Time for my monthly mini-reviews round-up post, and I'm afraid it's another short one. This month has flown by, and I just don't seem to have had much time for reading (outside the books that I read for review and research, but I never include those in these posts). Interestingly, there is a little bit of a theme (certainly with the last two books on this list). I found myself using the same words ('muted', 'melancholy') to describe books published over the past year by writers whose previous work wouldn't usually be described in that way. I'm wondering whether that's an indication of a 'lockdown effect' on their writing, or a 'lockdown effect' on the way I'm responding as a reader. Or maybe it's just a coincidence!

In case you're interested, here are the posts from the rest of the year: January, February, March, April. And here are my reviews for May...

Maggie's Grave by David Sodergren (2020)

Still trying to catch up with the towering pile I’ve got from my Abominable Books subscription! I can’t remember which month I got Maggie’s Grave, but it seemed like high time I read it. This one was very much a game of two halves for me: one aspect I loved, and another not so much. So… the bit I loved… Maggie’s Grave is set in Auchenmullan, a small Scottish town that’s well-nigh deserted since the last employers closed up shop and people started moving out. The town is cursed, partly by the circumstances of the post-industrial modern world and partly by something else (which I’ll come to shortly). I really enjoyed the way Sodergren evokes the dying town of Auchenmullan. There’s something beautifully unsettling about the empty streets with just a single occupied house, and the beleaguered bowling alley that’s the town’s last remaining business. However, while I would happily have read a slow-burn weird-fiction horror set in Auchenmullan, that’s not what Maggie’s Grave is. It’s a much more in-your-face gory tale about a witch who was executed in the town and comes back periodically to take revenge. The death of Maggie Wall is described in detail in the opening chapter, so there’s no mystery here, and the rest of the story is mostly a series of cinematic bloody set-pieces as the (somewhat underdeveloped) main characters try to evade the supernatural enemy (and some human ones as well). Maggie’s Grave has its appeal, but it’s not quite to my tastes.

The Night Gate by Peter May (2021)

This next book was a bit of surprise – and by that I mean I genuinely wasn’t expecting it to be written. If you’ve read my previous blogs, you’ll know that Peter May’s Enzo Macleod books are my comfort-reading series. I’ve read all them several times, and I reread the whole series (again) during lockdown. In my previous blogs, I’ve talked about Cast Iron as the finale to the series – because I believed it was. And I was right… until this year. Plot twist: May wrote and published another (final?) Enzo novel during lockdown, which brings Enzo’s story up to the present day. We rejoin Enzo years after the dramatic conclusion of Cast Iron. Not only is he older, he’s remarried, retired and living in Cahors during a pandemic. And yet he still manages to get drawn into a cold case involving the discovery of the remains of a German WWII airman in a small French village. It’s not long before the case gets a bit warmer, though, as a present-day murder occurs shortly afterwards. There’s a more melancholy tone to The Night Gate than the previous books in the series – and not just because of the COVID backdrop. Growing old doesn’t really suit Enzo, and growing up hasn’t been easy for his daughters and sons-in-law either. Overall, it’s a far more muted end to the series than Cast Iron was. At times, the story of the (well-crafted) WWII-era mystery dominates a bit as well, so this isn’t solely Enzo’s story.

If It Bleeds by Stephen King (2020)

Next, I went back to catching up my Abominable Books pile. This one was my mystery second-hand book last month, so it came wrapped in brown paper, string and a wax seal. Very exciting! This is a collection of four novellas from King that was published last year. The title novella is a story in King’s crime series (which began with Mr Mercedes) and a sequel to The Outsider. It’s the first story to feature Holly Gibney, a minor character in previous books, as the protagonist. As it really is a sequel, I found it a little hard to follow at times as I haven’t read The Outsider. In fact, I haven’t read any of King’s crime novels, so I was occasionally confused by mentions of other characters and plots. I did enjoy the central premise though, so maybe it’s on me for reading out of sequence. The other stories here were good solid King fare – though perhaps a little muted compared to some of his other work. Mr Harrigan’s Phone is a typically Stephen King take on the idea of someone being buried with their mobile phone; Rat treads familiar ground with its story about a writer locking himself away to finish his work and… not doing so well. My favourite of the four was definitely The Life of Chuck, a three-part story told in reverse. It’s a more melancholic and beautiful take on humanity than you might be expecting, and it’s certainly the most thought-provoking of the four.

My Year in Books 2021: April

Time for my monthly blog post about the books I've read for pleasure recently. It's not a bad sized list (though not my longest), but sadly there was really only one standout book this time.

In case you're interested, here are my other posts from 2021 so far: January, February, March

One by One by Freida McFadden (2020)

For some reason, I was back on my ‘Books Like And Then There Were None’ kick this month… with somewhat different results to last time. I’ve still not read The Ninth Guest (the book the precursor to And Then There Were None), but I did find two books on Prime Reading that looked promising. First up, I read One by One – not One by One by Ruth Ware, but a different One by One. Hmmm… One by One by Freida McFadden is about a group of friends – Claire (the narrator), Noah (her husband), Lindsay (her best friend), Warner (Lindsay’s new boyfriend), and Jack and Michelle (their old college friends). The group are heading off to a luxury spa, which is somewhat surprisingly set in the midst of a forbidding forest that may or may not be home to bears and coyotes. Of course, as soon as they get to the forest (with no mobile reception), the car breaks down and they’re forced to head out on foot. We’re already primed for the deaths to start, by both the title and the use of the near-ubiquitous chapter-in-italics-with-an-undisclosed-narrator technique. One by One is an alright read, but it’s a bit predictable and the characters aren’t the most nuanced. It also uses an… erm… familiar trope (from And Then There Were None and Saw) but in a way that makes it quite obvious what’s going on. All in all, this isn’t the worst Prime Reading book I’ve read, but it isn’t the best.

The House Party by Mary Grand (2020)

And onto the next one… The House Party sounds like it’s going to be classic And Then There Were None territory, doesn’t it? Well, sadly, it isn’t. The eponymous party is simply the backdrop to the first chapter – all of which takes place outside the party rather than actually in it. The party in question is a housewarming for Kathleen and Patrick’s fancy new house, and all their friends are having a great time. Kathleen isn’t, though, and she takes time out to talk to her mild-mannered friend Beth (who is the novel’s protagonist) about what’s bothering her. Of course, she doesn’t give quite enough detail – she just says that someone at the party has been threatening her, and that she’s worried they know her big secret – so when she turns up dead shortly afterwards, Beth doesn’t have a lot to go on. The party itself isn’t really an important plot point, but it serves to provide a list of suspects. I’ll admit that there was a lot here that didn’t work for me (e.g. the murderer is really obvious, and there’s a very odd eBay link embedded into the text for some reason), but I did like the main character. I enjoyed seeing Beth coming into her own as she insisted on pursuing the truth, despite all her friends telling her to let it drop. Other than that, this one didn’t really do it for me. Like One by One, there weren’t a lot of surprises with this one.

The Arrangement by Miranda Rijks (2020)

I really can’t explain what happened next. I have a towering to-read pile, and I only read One by One and The House Party because of my And Then There Were None thing. I don’t know why I went on to read The Arrangement, which certainly didn’t give any indication that it would be something along those lines. It’s a domestic thriller that touches on the world of sugar daddies/babies. But it isn’t The Arrangement by Robyn Harding (the ‘master of domestic suspense), which is set in the world of sugar daddies/babies. It’s a different The Arrangement. Between this and One by One, I feel like I’ve stumbled into the mockbuster section of Prime Reading (you know, like watching I Am Omega when you meant to watch I Am Legend, which wouldn’t be a bad thing – I Am Omega is great). I don’t have a huge amount to say about The Arrangement (the one I read), as it’s a fairly pedestrian thriller with an unremarkable conclusion. It’s another book marketed as having a ‘stunning twist’, when, in fact, it just has a standard reveal. Divorced mother-of-two Grace is devastated when her daughter Abi is murdered while on holiday in South Africa. The police believe it was a random attack by a drug addict, but when Grace discovers Abi was working as a sugar baby, she suspects there’s more to her daughter’s death. At least she has her oldest friends by her side to support her, eh? Not a strong recommendation.

Apartment 16 by Adam Nevill (2010)

I decided to switch from domestic thrillers to darker fare next, when I returned to my towering Abominable Books pile. The first one I chose from the pile was one of the ‘bonus’ (secondhand) books that come with the monthly subscription. Surprisingly enough, I hadn’t read Nevill’s Apartment 16 before. I’m very glad I have done now, though, as I really enjoyed it. The book’s protagonists are Apryl, a young American woman who has unexpectedly inherited a swanky London flat from an estranged great aunt, and Seth, a night porter who works in the building in which the flat is found. However, the book’s main character is really the apartment building itself. I completely fell in love with Barrington House! It’s an ostensibly upmarket block in one of the more expensive areas of London – a number of the flats belong to rich foreign businessmen and various upper class types. But what we actually see of Barrington House is an unsettling shadow of (probably) former glory. The flat Apryl inherits is gloomy and outdated, and it’s filled with the debris hoarded by her great aunt. Other flats that we ‘see’ reveal a similar story. The staff accommodation – what we see of it – is cramped, overheated and oppressive. And then there’s Apartment 16… this flat has been emptied for over 50 years, but the place has a strange effect on night porter Seth. I was definitely captivated by this setting, and the reveal of Apartment 16’s history was suitably chilling and unpleasant.

The Last House on Needless Street (2021)

I’m torn with this one. It was the featured book in the March Abominable Books box. It looks amazing, and it’s certainly had a lot of high praise. And that’s kind of the first problem… This is undoubtedly the most over-hyped book I’ve read in a long time. The hardback edition has FIVE pages of gushingly OTT blurbs from writers including Stephen King, Joanne Harris and Adam Nevill, describing the book as the most exciting thing they’ve ever read, better than Shirley Jackson, the best book since Gone Girl, etc. etc. No book could live up to that, and The Last House on Needless Street certainly doesn’t. Don’t get me wrong, it’s beautifully written, and it has several wonderfully-realized unreliable narrators (always a key to my heart). But the story itself is pretty mundane and predictable. Ted is a loner who lives in the eponymous house, sharing his life with a young girl he calls his daughter and his cat (who sometimes narrates). Dee is a troubled woman searching for her sister Lulu, who disappeared a decade earlier. The book sets us up for one story, before revealing that something else is going on. The author includes an earnest afterword and bibliography about that something else, stating that she wanted to write sensitively about a horror cliché. However, in order to do that, the book falls back on probably the most clichéd trope of the genre. The Last House on Needless Street is good, but it’s not Shirley Jackson good.

My Year in Books 2021: March

Well... this is definitely a longer post than last month's! I've read a few more novels this month than in February, mostly due to me finding a new series I like and binge-reading most of it.

So here come my mini-reviews of the books I read in March, and in case you're interested, here are the other posts so far from this year: January, February

The Boatman's Daughter by Andy Davidson (2020)

I’ve fallen really behind with my Abominable Book Club reading (that’s the amazing monthly horror book box that I subscribe to). I’ve got a few months’ worth of books from them to read – all of which look great – and so I thought I’d make a start on catching up this month. The first one I read was the featured book a couple of months ago. The Boatman’s Daughter is the story of Miranda Crabtree (the daughter of the title). It begins with Miranda accompanying her dad on a job – he is taking the local ‘witch’ out to perform some clandestine service for Billy Cotton, the local (unhinged) preacher. Things take a pretty unpleasant turn early on, setting in motion a dark tale in which Miranda is forced to take on horrible work for horrible people, before realizing that things have to change if she’s going to ensure her survival (and the survival of those she cares for). That plot summary is a bit rubbish, to be honest, but I don’t want to give too much away. The dark, unsettling pleasure of The Boatman’s Daughter lies in its feel as much as its plot. The book is Southern Gothic, but in the best possible way. It’s full of sleazy darkness, the oozing murk of the bayou, and crumbling old buildings that house really nasty secrets. And, like all good horrors, the shadowy supernatural threats are utterly overshadowed by the human ones. It’s darkly lush and really quite compelling. Definitely recommend this.

Deity by Matt Wesolowski (2020)

The next book I read was also from the Abominable Book Club, but it was actually the featured book in this month’s parcel. Despite still having some books to catch up on, I couldn’t wait to read Deity. It appeared to have been written especially for me. Deity is the fifth book in Wesolowski’s Six Stories series (though you don’t need to have read the others). The series premise is that online journalist Scott King presents a podcast exploring the darker mysteries of the online world. Each story is presented through six interviews, each offering a different perspective. It’s Rashomon for the internet age. I was completely intrigued by this premise (and if you’ve read my blogs before you’ll know how much I adore unreliable narrators/narratives). And I was not wrong to be intrigued – this book was absolutely right up my street. Deity has Scott King explore the case of Zach Crystal, an enigmatic pop star who died amid a flurry of #MeToo allegations. The book came out in late 2020, and it’s understandably been described as ‘timely’. It opens with epigraphs from books about Trent Reznor and Marilyn Manson, but I suspect they were added shortly before publication. Wesolowski’s Zach Crystal is an amalgamation of elements inspired by other pop culture stories (not least a certain iconic pop star who was… bad?), but with a very British backstory. Deity is incredibly readable, and I loved it. And I bought the rest of the series the minute I’d finished it!

Shame on You by Amy Heydenrych (2017)

For reasons best left unsaid, I jumped away from my Abominable Book pile and grabbed the first eBook to hand. This next one was on Prime Reading, and I chose it because the blurb looked the most intriguing of the available titles (and I know, I know, I said I wasn’t going to do that again). Heydenrych’s novel is about Holly Evans, a lifestyle influencer who has amassed large numbers of followers on Instagram and YouTube. Holly posts food videos, espousing a vegan, raw food, clean eating diet that – raise your eyebrows here – she says helped to her to beat cancer without the aid of chemotherapy or other chemical intervention. However, Shame on You doesn’t start with Holly’s rise to social media fame. It starts with a dishevelled and bleeding Holly stumbling into McDonald’s one night after being attacked. What could have led to this? And is Holly’s social media life somehow to blame? Actually… you don’t have to read very much of the book to find out the answers to this, as the circumstances of the attack and the motivation of the attacker become apparent very early on. Sadly, what isn’t said outright in the first couple of chapters is pretty easy to deduce. Shame on You has an interesting premise, but the execution is rather pedestrian and lacking in surprise (unless you count my surprise that, despite knowing her attacker has been in her flat, Holly never once considers calling a locksmith). Not a strong recommendation from me.

Six Stories by Matt Wesolowski (2016)

So after that slightly random departure, I went back to Matt Wesolowski’s series and started at the beginning. Six Stories is Wesolowski’s debut novel and the first in a series of (at the current time) five books. It was little weird reading Six Stories having already read Deity, though I can’t explain exactly why that was without giving a major spoiler. This did make me wonder what it would’ve been like to pick up Six Stories without any preconceptions, but it also made me realize that this is a series that can stand being read out of sequence. Six Stories follows the same format as Deity – a mystery is explored and discussed via interviews on a podcast, and each of the six chapters is an ‘episode’ of the show. The mystery here is the death of teenage Tom Jeffries, who disappeared during a trip to Scarclaw Fell and whose body was found a year later. Podcast host Scott King speaks with people who knew Tom, or who were involved in the case, to try and get to the truth of the case. There’s plenty here about the complexity and nuance of teen dynamics, but also a healthy dose of sinister folklore and urban legend, particularly focused around the supposedly supernatural threats that lurk on Scarclaw Fell. The mystery here held, perhaps, fewer surprises than Deity (and some things were quite obvious early on), but the way the story is told is just captivating, and I really couldn’t put it down.

Hydra by Matt Wesolowski (2017)

After Six Stories, I went straight into the second book, Hydra. And I think this one is my favourite of the three I’ve read so far. Following the same format as the other books, Hydra sees Scott King look into the ‘Macleod Massacre’ of 2014. A young woman named Arla Macleod killed her family in a shocking and frenzied attack. She was found guilty of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility and sent to a secure unit. But why did Arla do it? Is ‘psychosis’ enough of an explanation? Spoiler alert: no, ‘psychosis’ is not enough of an explanation, and the book does an admirable job of attempting to cut through some of the panic induced by the word (though I will say, as a minor criticism, it doesn’t go far enough and still relies on the idea that ‘psychosis’ only exists in the super-scary hallucinations-and-violent-delusions flavour, ignoring the somewhat more mundane breaks from reality that are more common). That said, I enjoyed the way the book’s fictional podcaster pushed to get under the skin of Arla’s story, revealing some pretty horrible things in the end. While Six Stories and Deity cloak their stories with a folk horror fog, Hydra draws on urban legends, creepypastas and internet games (Black-Eyed Kids, the Korean Elevator Game). It was also nice to see the first appearance of Wesolowski’s own antichrist superstar Skexxixx, who appears in Deity as well. This fictional character is turning out to be way more sympathetic than his real-life counterpart!

Changeling by Matt Wesolowski (2018)

I really have just ploughed on with Wesolowski’s series, haven’t I? I’m finding them a bit moreish! And I’m now really not sure whether Hydra is still my favourite, or whether it’s been usurped by Changeling. I’m definitely noticing some themes that run through the Six Stories series as well. While the mysteries in each book have a hint of the supernatural, they all have a very human heart, dealing with social issues that are both current and, sadly, deep-rooted. There’s a recurrent sympathizing with the disenfranchised – particularly children in care – and an implicit criticism of just how much of blind eye is turned when someone is exhibiting behavioural problems indicative of trauma. But all the books also reveal a fascination with both traditional and contemporary folklore and, strikingly, terrifying forests. Changeling has all of this in spades: podcaster Scott King investigates a thirty-year-old missing child case. One night in 1988, little Alfie Marsden went missing from his dad’s car on the edge of Wentshire Forest Pass (and Wentshire joins Six Stories’ Scarclaw Fell and Deity’s Crystal Forest as a place of sylvan terror and folk legend). But there’s more to the story than just the threat of the forest’s fair folk. I’ll admit to spotting the secret here, though I wasn’t totally sure that it was really going to go where I suspected. But it did, and the ending packed the punch I was anticipating. As with the other books in the series, I couldn’t put this one down.

My Year in Books 2020: August

There's a few more titles on my list this month than previously! I read quite a lot in August, although I should probably say that I read almost all of these books (some of which are admittedly novellas, not novels) when I had a week off work. So that might explain why I had so much more timing for reading for part of this month.

My short reviews of the books I read for pleasure this month are belowed, but in case you're curious, here are my reviews from previous months: January, February, March, April, May, June, July

The Whisper Man by Alex North (2019)

I’ve had this one on my to-read pile for a while – so long, in fact, that I can’t remember when or where I bought it. The Whisper Man is a crime novel, but with little touches of horror around the edges. The story unfolds from multiple perspectives (as is quite the fashion in contemporary crime fiction). A young boy has vanished from Featherbank, with eerie echoes of an old case. Fifteen years ago a serial killer abducted and murdered five young boys. The killer was known at the ‘Whisper Man’, because he lured his victims out of their homes by whispering at their windows. But the Whisper Man has been behind bars for many years now, although the body of one of his victims was never found. The story of the investigation into the contemporary case is interwoven with a first-person narration: Tom Kennedy and his son Jake, still grieving after the death of Tom’s wife, have moved to a new house for a fresh start. Jake is a bright, but unusual, child, prone to chatting to imaginary friends. This takes a darker turn when Jake seems to know things about their new home that he really shouldn’t. I really enjoyed The Whisper Man – it’s a proper page-turner. I’ll admit, I did work out one of the big surprises about halfway through, but that wasn’t a problem at all. At the book’s heart is Tom and Jake’s relationship, which is painful, difficult and sometimes challenged, but ultimately sympathetic and engaging.

The Levels by Helen Pendry (2019)

This one has been on my to-read pile since November. I bought it in Aberystwyth last year when we were there for Abertoir, as I wanted to get something from the ‘local fiction’ section of the bookshop. I couldn’t find anything set/written/published in Aberystwyth itself, so I stuck with mid-Wales more generally. The Levels was published by Parthian, who are based in Cardigan, and it’s set in a fictional mid-Wales town called Pont Rhith. Abby Hughes is a residential social worker from London, who has come to Pont Rhith to search for a man called Tegid Rhys, one of the homeless people who stayed at the hostel where Abby works. Tegid has been sending Abby postcards from Pont Rhith, but when he sends her his campervan keys in the wake of a horrific accident (a military drone has crashed into a caravan park, killing a young mother), Abby sets out to try and find Tegid. This is the set-up, but it doesn’t quite do justice to Pendry’s story. Pont Rhith and the surrounding area is as much a character here as Abby or any of the people she meets (military security consultant Ben Rickman, former soldier turned holiday-homer Owen, Welsh language bookshop owner Delyth, defiantly anti-English farmer Mr Ellis). It’s a town shadowed (suffocated?) by defunct mines and overlooked by the abandoned village of Bethania, where the MoD have plans that most of the locals don’t even care about. The Levels had me completely gripped – I strongly recommend this one.

Dead Funny, edited by Robin Ince and Johnny Mains (2014)

It only seemed fitting to follow up The Levels with the other book I bought at the same time in Aberystwyth. Robin Ince was a guest at last year’s Abertoir Festival, and so I bought Dead Funny while we were there. To be honest, I’ve been meaning to read this one for ages, and I’m not really sure why it’s taken me so long. Dead Funny is a collection of horror short stories written by comedians, including some of my favourite comedians, so it seems like one I should’ve read sooner. Now, the book is marketed with that word ‘funny’ – with a reasonable assumption being that comedians would write hilarious black comedy horror – but, actually, most of the stories aren’t actually funny. They’re really dark and twisted (some downright disturbing), which isn’t really a surprise if you know anything about stand-up comedians. I was expecting Reece Shearsmith’s story (‘Dog’) to be dark – and it really was – but Sara Pascoe (‘A Spider Remember’) and Al Murray (‘For Everyone’s Good’) took me by surprise. Their stories were both really effective horror tales, but not exactly laugh riots. Katy Brand’s ‘For Roger’ and Rufus Hound’s (very sly) ‘Fixed’ were also excellent, though, again, twisted little tales. In a way, it’s the actual comedy offerings – Stewart Lee’s ‘A View from a Hill’ and Tim Key’s ‘Halloween’ are both written as characteristic ‘bits’, rather than horror stories – that turn out to be the most disappointing, as they jar with the bleakness of the other tales.

Holt House by L.G. Vey (2018)

A couple of months ago, a friend on Twitter was talking about the Eden Book Society, and I was intrigued. This is a project from Dead Ink Books – the Eden Book Society was an enigmatic subscription-based horror publisher in the twentieth century, whose output has never been republished… until now! Dead Ink Books have secured the rights to publish the entire back catalogue of the Eden Book Society, and they’ve begun with a selection of novellas from 1972. If this all sounds too exciting to be true, it’s really up to you whether you believe or not. I’m just gutted that I missed this when it was first announced, and that I didn’t read any of the novellas until now. Holt House was the first of the Eden Book Society novellas that I read, and I really enjoyed it. It’s the story of Ray, a troubled young man who returns to his hometown and becomes fascinated by his former neighbours Mr and Mrs Latch. He hides out in Holtwood, watching the Latches and thinking back to a time in his childhood when he stayed with them overnight, and Mr Latch showed him something bad that they kept in the wardrobe. Ray’s story did not go in the direction I was expecting – Holt House is full of surprises, even when you think you’ve worked it all out. It’s also got a little bit of folk horror (not overdone) and a little bit of weird-fic about it. Really well-written and very enjoyable.

Judderman by D.A. Northwood (2018)

Having really enjoyed Holt House, I decided to just carry on with the Eden Book Society titles that are out so far (except Starve Acre… which has a whole story of its own that’ll have to wait for another time). The next one I read was Judderman. As I said, Holt House has a bit of a weird-fic feel to it (in places), and Judderman does too. However, while Holt House evokes more old-school weird fiction (Spirit of the Woods-type stuff in the tradition of Arthur Machen), Judderman belongs to the New Weird (and comparisons with China Miéville are inevitable with this one). The story focuses on Danny and Gary Eider, a pair of brothers living in London in the early 1970s. There are a lot of ‘period’ details here – references to IRA bombs, racism, unemployment – which combine with urban legends and imagined monsters to create an unsettling cityscape, which the Eider brothers know as ‘London Incognita’. London Incognita’s ultimate bogeyman is the eponymous Judderman, an entity that hovers at the periphery, not quite visible, and who echoes through other folklore of the city. When Danny goes missing, Gary starts to fear that his ‘brother’s with the Judder’. In a fragmented, dreamlike narration, Gary picks around London Incognita, talking with the mud larks and antiquarian booksellers who know something of the city’s secrets. There are some fantastic bits in Judderman, though I felt the novella format constricted the narrative a bit. This one felt like it could have been expanded.

A Dedicated Friend by Shirley Longford (2018)

My next Eden Book Society novella was A Dedicated Friend by Shirley Longford (and, as with all the titles, you can either read the biography of the ‘author’ at the beginning of the book, or you can read the note at the end that explains this is a pseudonym of a contemporary British horror writer). Of the three I’ve read so far – all of which use period details to convincingly set their stories in 1972 – A Dedicated Friend is the one that makes the clearest attempt to tap into a particular anxiety of the 1970s and build on this to create a horror story. As the blurb tells us, organ donation was ‘in its infancy’ in 1972, and A Dedicated Friend features a woman, Daisy, who has agreed to donate a kidney to her aunt via new surgical techniques. Something is… off about the whole thing, though, and Daisy’s stay in hospital begins to feel like the stuff of nightmares (this is not a good story to read if you’ve got any phobias around surgery or medical procedures). I really enjoyed the tone and atmosphere with this one – even the most mundane events in the hospital (an omelette being served instead of pasta, a fellow patient borrowing a book) are infused with a wonderful sense of dread. The story itself is a wee bit predictable, and I could see where it was going almost as soon as the ‘dedicated friend’ made her first appearance. Nevertheless, I still enjoyed the ride.

Plunge Hill: A Case Study by J.M. McVulpin (2020)

My Eden Book Society quartet finished with Plunge Hill: A Case Study, which is the most recently published in the series. It’s the longest one so far, though still technically a novella. The story begins with an introduction from J.M. McVulpin who, as the biography explains, was a psychiatrist who worked at several institutions, including the eponymous Plunge Hill. The hospital is now closing down (or, rather, being closed down), and McVulpin has decided to share a ‘case study’ – the tragic account of Bridget ‘Brix’ Shipley, one of the hospital’s medical secretaries who sadly (according to McVulpin) suffered from an undiagnosed delusional disorder. McVulpin didn’t know Brix during her time working at Plunge Hill, but he has acquired letters and other documents from her family and landlady that will allow her story to be told ‘in her own words’. However, McVulpin can’t help but interject on occasion in the form of footnotes of increasing length. What happened to Brix at Plunge Hill? And was it all really just in her head? What I really enjoyed about Plunge Hill is that it leaves some tantalizing questions unanswered. As a fan of unreliable narrators (which you may have spotted from some of my other reviews), this one was great fun. There are multiple narrators and narratives here, and not a single one can be relied on – I love that. The folk horror vibe that seeps into the story is also a joy. I think this might be my favourite of the series.

Deadhead by Shaun Hutson (1993)

Okay, this next one is definitely not my usual sort of thing. I should probably explain… last month I decided to treat myself and pay for a subscription to the Abominable Book Club, a horror book subscription service. Each month you receive a new horror title and a mystery book (plus some added extras and snacks, if you choose the full package). All subscribers receive the same new book, but the mystery book is different for everyone (it’s usually a vintage, aka second-hand, paperback), and for added mystery it comes wrapped up in brown paper and sealed with wax (and were those bloodstains? I probably shouldn’t ask). I got my first Abominable Book Club parcel this month, and the experience of receiving and opening the mystery book was a lot of fun. A lot more fun than reading the mystery book, if I’m honest, because Shaun Hutson’s writing is… not to my taste. This one is pretty typical of his 90s splatterpunk crime fiction. It’s got a private eye with terminal cancer, an abducted teenage daughter, child pornographers, snuff films and a drug-addled prostitute. It’s also got more descriptions of bullet wounds than I thought I’d ever read in one place, plus some pretty lurid sexual violence and shocks-for-shock’s-sake. And, I have to say, almost zero characterization (except, weirdly, the drug-addled prostitute). Why did I read it? I can’t really explain – I think I just got carried away by the cool packaging and the nice meringues that came with it.

Hinton Hollow Death Trip by Will Carver (2020)

Deadhead was the B-movie, but the main feature of my Abominable Book Club parcel was Will Carver’s Hinton Hollow Death Trip. I’ve not read any of Carver’s other books (this one is the third title featuring his detective character, Sgt Pace). However, everything I read said that the books were a ‘loose series’, and that they can all be read as standalones. This is definitely the case with Hinton Hollow Death Trip. I didn’t feel like I was missing anything by not having read the earlier books, though I got the impression I might have picked up on a few details if I had. Hinton Hollow Death Trip is a hard book to describe. It tells the story of five days in the life of a little village in Berkshire – and it’s narrated by Evil. Evil’s come to Hinton Hollow, and its visit begins with the death of a child (well, it doesn’t quite begin there, but I’m not going to spoil anything!). This is an incredibly clever book, and such a compelling way to construct a crime story. There’s an awful lot to be impressed by here. Sadly, though, I suspect the author’s own biases have seeped in a little more than they should: I struggled a bit with seeing Evil condemning overweight people (who all eat like cartoon characters) and tired mothers as equally bad as murderers and animal abusers. It’s a shame, as this is a great book, but it is tinged with a bit of misogyny.

A Dark Matter by Doug Johnstone (2019)

Me and my mum got tickets for a (virtual) event at Portobello Bookshop, with readings from Val McDermid and Doug Johnstone. The event will mark the release of new books by both authors, including the second book in Johnstone’s Skelfs series. We thought it would probably be a good idea to read the first book in the series first! Johnstone’s series is about the Skelf family, three generations of women who run the family business(es): funeral directors with a side line in private investigation. A Dark Matter begins with the unconventional funeral of patriarch Jim Skelf, and the decision taken by his widow (Dorothy), daughter (Jenny) and granddaughter (Hannah) to continue his work, assisted by Indy, Hannah’s girlfriend and trainee funeral director, and Archie, Jim’s assistant who suffers from Cotard’s syndrome. It’s an original set-up for a crime series, and A Dark Matter sees the women investigate the disappearance of one of Hannah’s university friends and a potential case of adultery. Dorothy also decides to investigate some of the secrets that didn’t quite go to the grave with Jim. I enjoyed the characters – though Dorothy, Jenny and Hannah aren’t exactly happy people – and some of the investigation storylines had a charm and intrigue to them. It’s all a bit grim – don’t be mislead by the blurbs on the cover claiming this is a ‘funny’ book – and it goes to some pretty dark (and almost implausible?) places. But we both enjoyed it, and we’re looking forward to hearing from the author.