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 Finch

Gray 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)

Outline

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 …

Review

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 Clarke

Inspector Ryan Greening – Jared Padalecki

Marshall 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)

Outline

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 …

Review

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 Cranston

Elaine O’Brien – Mayim Bialik

George 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)

Outline

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 …

Review

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 Hamm

Tracey Hansen – Holliday Grainger

Jack McCracken – Iain Glen

Penny McCracken – Rachel McAdams