Great reviews, eerie art, Christmas chillers

Apologies for my tardiness on here during the course of this autumn. I’m sorry I haven’t been posting more. The truth is that November in particular has been a phenomenally busy time, what with my promotional campaign for ROGUE, and the finishing touches I’ve been putting to my next novel (my first with Thomas & Mercer), whose title I can’t yet divulge, though as the publicity campaign for that one will be commencing soon, it won’t be too long (and the cover art is sweet, trust me).

I’ve also, as it happens, been working hard on the next book after that, my second for Thomas & Mercer, and am deep in the process of editing the next Heck epic, which is tentatively titled DEVIL’S BARGAIN, though that may change. On top of all that, I’ve got some other bits and bobs to talk about, including more Heck stuff, and a comprehensive list of MY FAVOURITE CHRISTMAS GHOST STORIES, all of which can be found below (the latter near the bottom of today’s post).

First though, how about something …

FABULOUS

I’m obviously talking about the image at the top of today’s column. It’s the work of Polish artist, Dawid Boldys, and it will adorn the cover of the Czech edition of my autumn/winter horror novella, SEASON OF MIST, or, as it translates, OBDOBI MLH. It depicts the scene in the novella when a bunch of schoolkids go up to the derelict coal mine, to collect bonfire fuel, even though they’ve been warned that there is a serial child killer on the loose. (If you want to know how that works out for them, you’ll need to grab hold of the English version; just follow the link).

If memory serves, OBDOBI MLH, is due for publication just around now, which some of my more regular readers may be confused by, given that the narrative commences in September, though in truth, SEASON OF MIST isn’t just about the autumn months. Its narrative runs deep into December, only ending quite close to Christmas. So, hopefully, brand new readers in the Czech Republic will still find it a potent tale.

In addition to this, I want to talk a little bit about ROGUE, the eighth installment in the Heck saga. It’s doing fantastically well; I’m truly delighted the way sales are going and how it’s drawn quite a bit of attention from the crime-writing community. You might be interested in the online interview I did with Sam Brownley of the UK CRIME BOOK CLUB: HERE.

If that’s not enough, since my last post, ROGUE has gathered several more great reviews from some very august persons. Check these out below (sorry, I’m being very self-indulgent and running them in their entirety, so feel free to skip down to the next item, if these are of no interest) …

Wow! Strap in & hold on tight for one Heck (sorry) of a rollercoaster ride from Paul Finch with literally everything you need & more from a cop thriller - a battered, bruised, disgraced cop out for revenge & a system out to thwart him at every turn. Truly outstanding!

Nick Oldham, author of the Henry Christie Mysteries

Grim, gritty, and gripping. Heck crashes through the pages like a bull in a China shop: relentless and unstoppable.

Antony Johnston, author of the Dog Sitter Detective series

When two masked gunmen wipe out an elite police unit in an attack on a London pub they make a deadly mistake: leaving Mark ‘Heck’ Heckenburg alive.

Suspended from the Met and under investigation by his former colleagues, Heck is determined to avenge his dead friends at any cost. The journey to do so takes him from London gangland, through the industrial wastelands of the North, to the wilds of Scotland. There he encounters a crime syndicate more brutal than anything even he has faced before.

There are tough maverick cops, and then there is the tungsten hard version created by Paul Finch. The difference when the gloves are off and the rule book in the bin is as wide as that between a banger and the atom bomb.

In this latest instalment, as would be expected, the action is both relentless and bruising. The climax is made all the more dramatic by being played out with one of the most dramatic landscapes in the world as a backdrop.

Finch pays close attention to the tools of the trade of violence, not just in the expected way writers in the genre note the capacities of a gun or a knife for a readership avid for detail. He is fully aware of their capacity to do harm, both to the person hit, and the one pulling the trigger. This lends an extra level of authenticity to the resulting carnage.

Finch also asks an interesting moral question in this book, in previous outings there has always been something of the time bomb about Heck. What will happen now the fail safes that have previously stopped the clock before the hands reach twelve are no longer in place? Just how thin is the line between being a maverick on the side of right, and the sort of person they are best placed to hunt?

Answering those questions potentially opens up a new chapter both for this series and its main character.

Adam Colclough, Shots Magazine

Paul Finch’s previous DS Mark Heckenburg novel, KISS OF DEATH ended on the most brutal cliff-hanger imaginable, with most of Heck’s long-term colleagues mown down in a hail of gunfire and even his long-term love-interest, DSU Gemma Piper, apparently lifeless in his arms.

That was almost six years ago - a LONG time to wait for the next instalment! - but ROGUE picks only a couple of months after the Ace of Diamonds massacre, with Heck suspended and now under investigation himself, suspected of having a role in the slaughter. Heck’s alone, but he has two things the rest of the police don’t: a clue to the killers’ true identity, and a burning desire for revenge.
Eluding police surveillance, Heck sets off on the trail of the killers, knowing he’s going down a road of no return. It leads back up North... and beyond it, into the Scottish Highlands and a riveting conclusion.

Paul Finch is a first-class storyteller, and in ROGUE he’s lost none of his touch. As you’d hope for Heck’s long-awaited return, this one has the volume dialled up to eleven, with all the unflinching eye for human cruelty, relentless pace and pulse-pounding action you’d expect from Finch - and a little bit more. After all, Heck’s hell on wheels even when he’s a police officer, but now he’s on a personal mission of revenge. I was almost afraid to find out how far he’d actually go to make the killers pay for what they’d done, and of what would be left for him afterwards.

Almost, but not quite. Paul Finch is far too good a storyteller for that.

Five stars, and I can’t wait for the next Heck book. I understand the delays that held further instalments of the series up are now resolved, and so here’s hoping there's a new one very soon.

Daniel Church, author of The Hollows and The Ravening

When Kiss Of Death was published in 2018, I doubt Paul Finch expected his readers to have to wait six years to see how he resolved the astounding cliff-hanger DS Heckenburg faced at the conclusion of that novel. But it seems not even best-selling authors are immune to the vagaries of the publishing industry. Still, better late than never, Rogue has arrived and once more chaos reigns as the one man wrecking ball known as Heck is let loose on the unsuspecting criminal community.

DS Mark ‘Heck’ Heckenburg works for the Serial Crimes Unit, a specialist department of the National Crime Agency whose remit is to investigate cases of serial murder and Rogue is the eighth in the series. Heck has had a complicated relationship with the head of the unit, DSU Gemma Piper. The two were in love but chose the job over their relationship and so he has been reconsidering his position in the SCU.

Their last case was an investigation into a multinational crime syndicate led by the Armenian oligarch Milena Misanyan. While celebrating after closing the case, 26 officers were gunned down in the Ace of Diamonds pub in Barnet, London. Two masked men decimated the unit.

Because he was picking up his colleague DC Gail Honeyford on the way, Heck arrived late and gave chase as the killers left the scene. Heck was able to injure one of the men in a fight before they escaped. Shot in the initial gunfight, Gemma Piper was left fighting for her life. Was the slaughter a revenge attack for the death of Misanyan during the operation?

Nearly two months later the investigation into the Ace of Diamonds massacre is going nowhere. No stone can be left unturned, and no matter how unlikely it may be, Heck has to be considered a suspect. DI Jude Penhaligan of Internal Investigations has been given the job of deciding whether or not Heck was involved. Although much reduced by grief and survivor’s guilt, Heck himself has no intention of being a bystander following the murder of his colleagues.

His only lead is a bangle snatched from the wrist of one of the killers. It suggests a link to the satanic Black Chapel murder case that was solved in Kiss of Death as a place to start. The Black Chapel killers were inspired by a black metal band, now retired to the Scottish countryside. Heck’s heading north! Once Penhaligan realises he has flown the coop, the chase is on. By dodging Internal Investigations, Heck has gone from a colleague who just needs to be ruled out to prime suspect.

From this point on, Rogue is all action. Heck reminds me of Parker in Richard Stark’s Point Blank, working his way up the criminal chain in ruthless, inexorable fashion; always beating the odds with a combination of street smarts, animal cunning and sheer bloody mindedness. Heck is a more human protagonist than Stark’s famously never-evolving antihero. Finch has given his character a traumatic back history and consequently a vulnerability which probably accounts for his popularity as much as his hard man persona. In particular, Heck’s relationships with women – his sister, Piper and Honeyford, for example – are nuanced, and allow him to stand out from the hard man copper crowd.

There is relatively little investigative work in Rogue. To a large extent, the novel succeeds or fails on its action sequences. Thankfully, Finch has included a number of them but two in particular stand out. The first is a shoot out on the motorway heading north, and the second is an especially extended sequence in the Scottish countryside. Both are excellent, dramatic, full of momentum and with a genuine sense of peril. Finch is also a successful horror writer, and he uses those skills to keep the tension ratcheted up.

Readers expecting a police procedural story might be slightly disappointed in this regard, but for my money Rogue more than delivers on its promise of Heck being let off his leash. After such a long delay, Finch must have felt some pressure when writing about Heck’s return. He needn’t have worried.

RoughJustice, Crime Fiction Lover website

In addition to all those, check out this one from top author and blogger, Donna Morfett, who classifies ROGUE as one of her top reads of 2024:

***

Okay, with ROGUE now discussed and done, let’s move onto the elephant in the room.

The one thing that sits in the backs of so many of our minds through from September to the year’s end (but which we’ll rarely admit to until around December), which is of course …

CHRISTMAS

I’m hoping to hit you with another completely original and free-to-read ghost story, right here on this blog, before the big occasional. Regular visitors will know that I try to do this every year. 

Unfortunately, it won’t be quite as easy this time. As I’ve already hinted, I have a mid-January deadline, and though I’m in a good position on that, it sometimes feels like madness to simply break off from a job like that in order to do something else.

I can’t make any promises on this, so all I can say is hang tight and we’ll see what we can do.

For anyone who considers it essential that they get their festive ghostly fix, all I can do is point you in the direction of my two relatively recent ghost collections, IN A DEEP, DARK DECEMBER and THE CHRISTMAS YOU DESERVE, both of which you’ll find several snippets from (and direct links to) if you follow this link back to a blogpost I made Last December: THE GHOSTING SEASON.  

There is also, of course, my British Fantasy Award shortlisted novella of 2010, SPARROWHAWK, which is another Christmas chiller, though in this case with romantic and historical elements as well.

However, in case you’ve already ‘done’ these collection, and I’m not able to deliver anything new before the end of the year, here, in chronological order, is a quick rundown of my 60 FAVOURITE CHRISTMAS GHOST AND HORROR SHORT STORIES (by other authors). Please don’t ask why I’ve chosen 60 instead of a more rounded-off number like 50 or 75 or 100; it just happened to be that these were all the stories I could remember. Also, worry not ... I’m not going to bore you with their outlines or offer reviews in each case. I’ve already said that I consider all of these to be outstanding efforts in the field. Just be advised that some of these will take some seeking out. (In addition, please don’t shout at me if I’ve missed out any good ones; just suggest them in the column underneath).

SIXTY CRACKING CHRISTMAS CHILLERS

(with lots of unconnected festive horror artwork 

just to add colour)

1. Horror: A True Tale by John Berwick Hardwood (1861)

2. The Crooked Mirror by Anton Chekov (1883)

3. Markheim by Robert Louis Stevenson (1885)

4. Christmas Eve on a Haunted Hulk by Frank Cowper (1889)

5. The White Raven by Dick Donovan (1899)

6. Jerry Bundler by WW Jacobs (1901)

7. The Shadow by E Nesbit (1905)

8. Between the Lights by EF Benson (1912)

9. How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery by EF Benson (1912)

10. The Story of an Appearance and a Disappearance by MR James (1913)

11. The Dead by James Joyce (1914)

12. The Festival by HP Lovecraft (1925)

13. The Prescription by Marjorie Bowen (1929)

14. The Crime on Christmas Night by Gaston Leroux (1930)

15. Smee by AM Burrage (1931)

16. The Crown Derby Plate by Marjorie Bowen (1933)

17. Back for Christmas by John Collier (1939)

18. Christmas Reunion by Andrew Caldecott (1947)

19. A Christmas Game by ANL Munby (1950)

20. Someone in the Lift by LP Hartley (1955)

21. Florinda by Shamus Frazer (1956)

22. The Waits by LP Hartley (1961)

23. And All Around the House by Jack Oleck (1972)

24. Christmas Night by Elizabeth Walter (1975)

25. The Chimney by Ramsey Campbell (1977)

26. Nursery Tea by Mary Danby (1978)

27. Christmas Entertainment by Daphne Froome (1979)

28. The Night Before Christmas by Robert Bloch (1980)

29. Calling Card by Ramsey Campbell (1980)

30. The Peculiar Demesne by Russell Kirk (1980)

31. Come, Follow! by Sheila Hodgson (1982)

32. Red Christmas by David Garnett (1985)

33. To Dance by the Light of the Moon by Stephen Gallagher (1986)

34. A Dickensian Christmas by Lanyon Jones (1986)

35. The Grotto by Alexander Welch (1988)

36. The Uninvited by John Glasby (1989)

37. The Deliverer by Simon MacCulloch (1989)

38. A Present for Christmas by AJ Merak (John Glasby) (1989)

39. A Christmas Story by James Dorr (1992)

40. In the Bleak Midwinter by Robert Swindells (1992)

41. Christmas Past by David Belbin (1992)

42. Christmas Game by Susan Price (1993)

43. Green by Mark Morris (1994)

44. Grandma Babka's Christmas Ginger And The Good Luck/Bad Luck Leshy by Ken Wisman (1994)

45. ... And Eight Rabid Pigs by David Gerold (1995)

46. The Travelling Saleman’s Christmas Special by C. Bruce Hunter (1995)

47. Christmas Dinner by Steve Harris (1996)

48. The Decorations by Ramsey Campbell (2005)

49. The Last to be Found by Christopher Harman (2006)

50. Loving Angels by Gary McMahon (2007)

51. Last Christmas by John Llewellyn Probert (2008)

52. Where the Stones Lie by Richard Farren Barbber (2012

53. With Their Eyes All Aglow by Jeff C. Carter (2013)

54. Dark Christmas by Jeanette Winterson (2013)

55. A Christmas Tradition by Peter James (2014)

56. The Psychomenteum by Steve Duffy (2020)

57. The Fourth Call by Ramsey Campbell (2021)

58. The Hanging of the Greens by Andrew Michael Hurley (2021)

59. Grey Glass by Reggie Oliver (2021)

60. Carol of the Bells and Chains by Laura Purcell (2023)