Review - Ring the Bells by CK McDonnell

Ring the Bells (Stranger Times, 5)

CK McDonnell
Bantam, 9 October 2025 
Available as: HB, 496pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9780857505392

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of Ring the Bells  to consider for review. Given the seasonal bent of this book, I should really have reviewed BEFORE not after Christmas, but my reviews have been a car crash recently so perhaps just take this as a hint to buy it for someone NEXT Christmas!

You actually might not think of McDonnell's Stranger Times series as providing potential for a Christmassy story. The titular, Manchester based newspaper, which operates from a decaying, closed-down church, and chronicles the eerie and the unexplained is produced on a shoestring by a cabal of eccentrics and misanthropes. Attempts by the staff to inject a note of goodwill or cheer into proceedings tend to fall flat, even if the team general end up saving the world by the last page.

The books so far have tended to explore the seamier side of supernatural life leaving little time for wonder and cheer. Most of all, the editor, Banecroft (who is surely some sort of cousin to Jackson Lamb in Slow Horses) lives on cynicism and booze and would, one thinks, likely sit up by the fireplace with a shotgun ready to scare Father Christmas right back up the chimney.

So, as the storyline here develops, it's fun to imagine how the coalescing evil - which is clearly going to coalesce into something rather Santa-shaped - will both ring all the Christmas bells and threaten the known universe. That does happen, I didn't anticipate how, and the knowledge of it doesn't in any way lessen the fun and the fear when it does. I will say that there were possibly Prathcettian overtones to the theme here that belief in itself is a power to be reckoned with, but McDonnell also plays subtle games with the usual seasonal redemption arc which should make us question the transformation of an evildoer into the Chrismassiest person ever. Here, even the wrongdoer has his doubts about that trope.

A couple of sub-plots are though perhaps worth as much attention as the main story. Christmas is a time for family, and as far as we know, Manny, the mysterious Rastafarian printer who makes sure that each week's edition of the ST gets to its readers, has no family (other than the strange entity which imbues him). In this story, we find out more about Manny's background. It's a very affecting and sad story, giving him a central place he deserves after four books of being rather at the margins (or perhaps, in the basement).

There are also developments in the world of the Founders, the entitled and wealthy clique who try to control the magical world. Given that places at that table tend to follow the "dead man's shoes" rule, it's perhaps no surprise that competition is ruthless but Ring the Bells sets us up I think for a future battle Royale to fill a pair of those shoes (only given the likely contenders, they'd better be killer heels, not just any old shoes.

An entertaining and fun addition to this series, showing the value of an ensemble cast which keeps things fresh by always providing new corners and angles to explore.

For more information about Ring the Bells, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - Relight my Fire by CL McDonnell

Relight my Fire  (Stranger Times, 4)

C K McDonnell
Penguin, 25 January 2024
Available as: HB, 528pp,  audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 528pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of Relight My Fire to consider for review.

Back in the Manchester world of The Stranger Times, the team have problems. Infernal powers have taken an interest in Vincent Bancroft, and while one might expect him to just tell them his diary's full, he actually comes across here as very vulnerable, in part because of action he took in an earlier book.

I enjoyed seeing Banecroft as something other than the grouchy, wisecracking boss of previous stories. It may have seemed as though, really, he had all the answers and was always three steps ahead of everyone else - but as is made clear that's not necessarily the case.

What Banecroft is still set upon is protecting Stella (who herself begins to seem a much stranger and more complex person than we have released yet). He'll do that, even if it means the unpleasant psychopomp in the floppy hat who's been shadowing him gets to carry him away to perdition. Why is Stell in danger? Well, she was I the wrong place at the wrong time, specifically, she nearly got fallen on when a young man who thought he could fly (he sort of could) fell from the heavens.

Why he was up there to begin with, who is pulling the strings and how it all connects with the appearance of Manchester's loneliest ghoul, you'll just have to read this book to find out. I found this one to be a little bit of a reset (not too much of one!) with a ore self-contained story and, as I said, a slightly different approach to Banecroft, that would I think make it an easy place to get into this series if you haven't been reading them (though if you don't then read the first three books you are seriously missing out). The same mixture of crime and the supernatural, with more emerging about the hidden world of the Folk, this story has a buzz and focus that's al of its own - as well as some extremely nasty and singularly driven characters, who might presage new alliances in future.

Overall, a story I really enjoyed and one which shows this series is firing on all cylinders.

For more information about Relight my Fire, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - Love Will Tear Us Apart by C K McDonnell

Love Will Tear Us Apart (Stranger Times, 3)

C K McDonnell

Transworld, 9 February 2023

Available as: HB, 464pp, e, audio

Source: Advance e-copy 

ISBN(HB): 9781787633391

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of Love Will Tear Us Apart via Netgalley to consider for review.

All is not well at The Stranger Times. New assistant editor Hannah Willis, until now our window into the Manchester-based publication which exposes the strange, the unlikely and the downright impossible from its base in a former church, has departed. Vincent Banecroft, the human waste tip of an editor who at least always gave the impression of knowing what was going on, is adrift.

Love Will Tear Us Apart therefore takes the risk of moving things on somewhat from the cosy - for values of "cosy" that admit bloody murder and monsters on the streets of Manchester - setting established in The Stranger Times and revisited in This Charming Man. A necessary risk, I think, for an ongoing series and one that I think McDonnell brings off magnificently. In Love Will Tear Us Apart we both see Hannah up to, well, her own thing, and Banecroft in freefall, obsessed with his dead wife to a degree that hadn't previously been made plain and which renders him dangerously vulnerable. It's up to the rest of the crew to hold things together, particularly Stella and a couple of new characters - who prove more than formidable. 

That doesn't mean that Love Will Tear Us Apart lacks the charm and humour of the previous books. Far from it. We see another Loon Day, the interactions between team members are as well observed as ever and there are the usual bizarre excerpts from the paper. There is though less focus on the production of the paper, and more on the working out of individual threats and of the history of some of the characters. That allows for a closer look at the inhabitants of McDonnell's alt Manchester, including the Founders themselves, who actually appear nastier each time they're glimpsed. (One of the perspectives they're seen from is via a creepy wellness centre, which manages both to be genuinely menacing and also rather funny). 

Alongside this we get a variety of sub-plots - ghosts, abductions by sinister goons and a returning character from This Charming Man, who I didn't expect to see again but whose presence does help to build a sense of a wider world. There's even a little gentle grave robbing. DI Tom Sturgess does also appear, although he is rather more peripheral than I'd have liked, his investigation not really going anywhere and not linking with the rest of the narrative much. But without Hannahin the Stranger Times offices perhaps he has less of a part to play.

That point aside, this is a thrilling continuation of the series, taking it to new places and showing us familiar characters slightly differently. And if it wasn't clear before, I think Love Will Tear Us Apart makes clear that any accommodation with the Founders is likely to be temporary at best - it isn't just their methods and history that taint them, but they also seem to attract the power hungry, the entitled and the plain bad to their orbit. Not a nice bunch.

It all comes together in a genuinely scary and perilous conclusion, and I look forward to a Book 4 and to seeing what McDonnell does next with his long-suffering characters.

For more information about Love Will tear Us Apart, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - This Charming Man by CK McDonnell

This Charming Man (Stranger Times, 2)
CK McDonnell
Transworld, 17 February 2022
Available as: HB, 512pp, audio, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781787633377

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of This Charming Man to consider for review.

This Charming Man follows on a few weeks after the events of The Stranger Times. Hannah has taken some time off to sort out her divorce problem (or rather, her husband problem). Meanwhile, as the prologue reveals, Manchester seems to be developing problems of its own. Vampires don't exist - as both mundane science and the knowing supernatural Folk attest - but what do you call it when a person develops strange dental features, is burned by sunlight, and craves human blood?

We're back with the misfits who edit The Stranger Times, an organ devoted to the bizarre and the unlikely and which is published from a deconsecrated church under the editorship of Vincent Banecroft, possibly the foulest man in journalism (I know). Hannah is the Assistant Editor, flung into the weird world of the Folk and their oppressors, the Founders and still getting to grips with a whole new world, as is DI Tom Sturgess, formerly the darling of the Greater Manchester Police but now tarnished by the events of the previous book.

The Stranger Times (the book, not the publication) was an enjoyable, though in places flawed, romp through a rather alternative take on urban fantasy. One of its problems for me was the extent to which the sheer outrageousness of Banecroft's character dominated things, with the rest of the team, and especially Hannah, rather flat in comparison (despite Banecroft being hospitalised and therefore absent for a chunk of the story). This Charming Man managed, in my view, a much better balance in this respect. Oddly, it does that partly by giving Banecroft more attention not less, showing his perspective on events, in particular how he is grieving for his wife and why he has land up at The Stranger Times. But it also brings in in another monster of a journalist, Stanley Roper, a freelancer who Bancroft brings in for his undoubted skills to form the "special investigations team" and sets on the track of villains who wish one member of the paper's staff no good at all.

The result is that there are two very strong storylines here with Banecroft playing a largely supportive part in driving them forwards (rather than just being annoying for unknown reasons. Though he still is annoying, of course). That gives more time for the team to bond and for their own different characters to come out, while also revealing a lot more about the supernatural side of Manchester. The denouement to all this was also satisfyingly violent and revelatory, demonstrating that, no, vampires aren't real - but also that power over reality can arise in the most unexpected places. 

Overall I enjoyed this book, though a couple of things did strike me. First, as we learned in the previous book that the paper has powerful and wealthy backers, there was less of a sense of jeopardy over the need to get an issue together and keep the show on the road, with the focus on investigation rather than stories. (We do get snippets of typical stories though). And secondly, I'm still unclear which man in all this was charming! Most of them (a couple of the team members aside) seemed thoroughly unpleasant. Indeed, a major subplot is misogyny - which while it does eventually tend to bring those displaying it to a bad end (good) cannot be said to leave much scope for charm. 

I'm inclined to view the title as ironic.

For more information about The Stranger Times see the publisher's website here.

#Review - The Stranger Times by CK McDonnell

The Stranger Times
CK McDonnell
Bantam Press, 14 January 2021
Available as: HB, 432pp, e, audio
Source: Advance e-copy via NetGalley
ISBN: 9781787633353

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of The Stranger Times via NetGalley. (I also have my copy on order from the local bookshop, because I need this one on my shelves!)

Is there a subgenre called "cosy urban fantasy"? If not, there ought to be. Not that The Stranger Times pulls its punches, oh no, we see some gruesome deaths here and evil is decidedly on the march, but still, there is that same combination - a strong sense of place, well defined characters and that slight twist of the absurd which I enjoy in cosy crime, an assurance perhaps that while there's a mystery to be solved and a real threat, other things are also important, or more important: office banter, for example, getting the latest edition of The Stranger Times to press, pursuing a good story for the lead. The characters need I think to be at home in some sense - to have found where they belong.

Before you can belong, though, you need to arrive and so for Hannah there's the little matter of a job interview... as this book opens, she is desperate for a job. Accustomed to a life of upper middle class luxury, she's alone, in unfamiliar Manchester, without money or friends, for the first time and desperate enough - just - to seek employment with the eponymous paper. We will find out what Hannah has done, and what's been done to her, in good time. First, she has to learn about The Stranger Times itself and the oddballs who staff it. 

The paper glories in the weirder side of life: UFOs, hauntings, conspiracy theories and the like. ('Nessie is the Father of my Child'). Presided over by Vincent Banecroft, a former hotshot Fleet Street editor fallen on hard times who now looks like 'his own corpse waiting to happen', The Stranger Times may have seen better days, but it has ethics of a sort: they don't make stuff up, they don't judge, instead they report what people claim they saw or what they claim happened. The claims may be rather outré, but the obvious liars and sensationalist are weeded out and there's an integrity in the way that it recognises and reports things that are being claimed to have happened. 

Nobody expects to wade into a supernatural crisis though, and indeed for a considerable time they don't realise that the bodies in the morgue with strange wounds, and the disappearance of a down-and-out man, have anything to do with each other. McDonnell allows the setting and personnel of the paper plenty of time to establish themselves. The staff - Hannah, Grace, Reggie, Ox, Stella and of course Manny, who prints the thing (he prefers to wear no clothes) are actually stranger than anything it reports. The grotesquerie at The Stranger Times was really entertaining and I enjoyed seeing the interplay between, for example, Grace, the fiercely Christian receptionist and drunken, foul-mouthed Banecroft. In parallel, we are told about a couple of villains who reflect the darker side of things and are clearly Up To Something. During this first third most of the action is with those villains, but what they are up to is still obscure. When things really begin to move along, and the team from the paper are fully in the firing line, they are well established and we really care what happens to them.

I won't say too much about the background that then reveals itself, except that The Stranger Times does (to a degree) follow the template of there being a "hidden" paranormal world that lives in tension with the mundane one - there's a balance that has to be kept and it is, of course, in danger of being upset. McDonnell does, however, bring a real freshness to the concept. The Stranger Times isn't about rivalries between clans of monsters or (much) about humans being drawn into their worlds, rather its's about individual motivations, greed, ambition, survival and the willingness to exploit others in pursuit of those things. As well as about the importance of getting the paper to press, come werewolves, police or rogue sorcerers. 

Oh, and about integrity - whether in that mission to report what is being said, in the desire of DI Sturgess to give the dead their due by investigating every case meticulously, even the hopeless ones or in Grace's fierce love for tearaway Stella who broke into the paper's offices one night and has stayed ever since. 

The group at the heart of the novel are eccentric, bickering and plain odd, but they have a fierce loyalty to one another which gives this novel real heart and soul. Combined with sharp writing ('Mason himself seemed oblivious to his own halitoxicity', 'Coppers often dealt with people who were having the worst days of their lives. That deserved somebody's best'), a strong plot and a good sense of place - the place being rainy Manchester ('predicting it was beyond the capacity of meteorological science') - that makes for a thoroughly readable and completely enjoyable story.

Here's hoping we meet Hannah, Vincent and company again and soon.

For more information about The Stranger Times, see the publisher's website here.

#Blogtour #Review - Till Morning is Nigh by Robert Parker

Till Morning is Nigh (Ben Bracken, 4)
Robert Parker
Endeavour Media, 13 December 2019
e-book, 225pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an ARC of Till Morning is Nigh and for inviting me to take part in the blog tour.

I'm really enjoying Parker's series of short, pacy action adventures/ thriller featuring Ben Bracken. I particularly like the fact that while these are at times gritty and engage with current issues and problems - especially this latest instalment - Parker doesn't take things over seriously. His protagonist Bracken is essentially a man on the run, a disgraced ex-soldier who's served time in prison but escaped, irredeemably compromised in the eyes of the authorities and therefore apt to be used by them or back to Strangeways he goes.

Any kind of life he makes for himself therefore risks being blown apart and is an accommodation with powers and principalities which he detests. At times Bracken kicks over the traces and strikes out on his own (and mayhem ensures), at times he is more accepting of the realities. As a result, nothing lasts for long and in each book of the series Bracken is in a new setting, under a new cover, with different objectives and facing different dangers. Parker is happy to shake things up so these settings are very diverse - in the last book, The Penny Black, Bracken stumbled into trouble when hiding out on the Norfolk Broads, here, he is almost rehabilitated (enough time has passed that he and his girlfriend have a baby son) and working a desk job for a police agency based in Manchester.

Bracken is strictly forbidden to go into the field, but if you think that'll stick once the fan needs disinfecting then you don't know Ben Bracken. When an undercover police officer is tortured to death to send a message, and links emerge with ex-soldiers and the Far Right, would you expect him to stand by?

What follows develops - once some preliminaries are sorted in the the first part of the book - into a white knuckle ride of a thriller which benefits from the fact that Bracken is operating (albeit still under a false identity) more or less above the radar. He doesn't have to worry primarily about his own cover, but can work - as part of a team - to address an insidious threat. it's Christmas in Manchester, and after recent political events (but not the 2019 election - ironically given the publication of this book on 13th December!) fascist elements are on the rise. Parker carefully distances Bracken from any close interest in politics, but it's clear this faction is inimical to what he was fighting for in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nevertheless they're plausible, and Parker sketches a chillingly feasible strategy they're using to get close to power. More realistic and current than in previous Bracken thrillers, this second part of the book is topped off by an explosive conclusion where the stakes are very, very high indeed.

I don't think we've ever before seen Parker's hero as close to being broken as he is in Till Morning is Nigh. Not only are the issues more personal to him - he feels real comradeship with the ex-soldiers here - but he has more at stake, no longer being a fugitive (even if he does still have secrets to keep). The book had a thrilling end, and the series as whole seems to have changed up a gear.

You can buy Till Morning is Nigh as an ebook from Amazon here and find out more about it on Goodreads here. If you'd like to connect with Rob here he is:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/robparkerauthor
Website: https://robparkerauthor.com/

Review - Weaver's Lament by Emma Newman

Weaver's Lament (Industrial Magic, 2)
Emma Newman
Tor.com, 17 October 2017/ 1 Nov2017
e, PB 160pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of this book via NetGalley

If it wasn’t for the weavers, what would you do?       
You wouldn’t have your clothes that’s made of wool
You wouldn’t have your coat of the black or the blue
If it wasn’t for the work of the weavers

- Chartist song (see http://thejovialcrew.com/?page_id=1639)

Another adventure for Charlotte Gunn, following Newman's Brother's Ruin, published earlier this year, and again in novella form as is becoming increasingly popular in SFF.

This time, Charlotte's off to Manchester, Cottonopolis, seat of the Industrial Revolution, where vast profits are to be made by the mill-owners. In Newman's world these mills are driven by magic, not steam, so we can expect less smoke in the air, but the workers are nonetheless sweated by their overseers, put up in filthy, cramped conditions and doing fifteen hour shifts in stiflingly hot, dangerous conditions. And they face other threats, too, as looms shatter and the overseers wield their straps to maintain discipline.

Charlotte's brother, Ben, has summoned her to this living hell (what's the quickest way out of Manchester? Drink) to assist him. Once again, she puts love for her brother first and agrees to go undercover in the mill to investigate the nest of Socialists he believes responsible for the damage. But Ben is working for Ledbetter, the magus who Charlotte knows has dark secrets.

This book was great fun, if that's possible in something that also sets out grotesque inequalities and cruelties that are often lost in the soft focus, Hovis-ad language of drama and storytelling. In particular, fantasy, whether epic, pseudo-medieval fantasy or its edgier urban cousin, still too often sees curation of the social hierarchy as the greatest good. In contrast, what Charlotte discovers here will, I suspect, drive her to seek the otherthrow of the hierarchy. It remains to be seen if she will carry her brother with her in that - I fear not, Ben comes across as something of a milksop, a man keen to ingratiate himself with the bosses, wanting his own mill to run.

I'm even doubtful of Charlotte's mysterious ally/ tutor, Hopkins, who pops up Gandalf-like to give advice a couple of times. Is his heart really in a challenge to the authority of the Royal Society of Esoteric Arts or does he have an agenda of his own? (Charlotte certainly has an agenda of her own when it comes to Hopkins, even if she hasn't realised it yet, one her stuffy fiance George may not like much - I can see some of that absent steam reappearing before long...)

In short - and this is quite a short book - this is an eminently readable and at time unflinching view of the Industrial Revolution, blended skilfully by Newman with a dose of magic. Charlotte's awareness of the world around her is developing and she's pitted against a particularly nasty form of exploitation.

I will look forward to the new Industrial Magic, hoping, though, that Newman will be able to write some full-length stories set in this world. The novella form is great but it would be wonderful to let these stories breathe a bit more.

Review: Graft by Matt Hill

Graft
Matt Hill
Angry Robot, 2 Feb 2016
PB/e, 448pp

I'm grateful for an advance copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

This novel is set in a near future, decaying Manchester which is both familiar and strange. While I wouldn't use the term "post apocalyptic" there is more than a hint of Mad Max here. (Or perhaps: this is what you might get if JG Ballard and Philip K Dick rewrote The Island of Doctor Moreau).

Clearly, something has gone very wrong: the economy is on its uppers, public services are non-existent and the only authority seems to be a vaguely mentioned "council". Nothing works, the city is run by gangsters ("Has he heard the rumour, they ask, that a gang of orphans living in the old city tunnels have turned bandit?") and those who can survive just have to graft to keep going - whether that means dodgy work for a scary self-styled Reverent who lives in a refugee camp in an old football stadium, working in the oldest profession or thieving.

The South, it is implied, is pretty much under water (for the Northerners described here that leads to lots of humorous asides: "You can do one back to your floods") but perhaps not subject to the same degree of gang rule, separatism and lawlessness as the North (though even there enough cohesion remains for Sellafield to remain guarded by its nuclear police and for "state" drones to wreak havoc from the sky on wrongdoers/ unfortunate bystanders. And the rivalry between Manchester and Liverpool is as strong as ever).

We never learn exactly what caused all this (global warming? disease?) although one flashback account seems to describe the moment when things went from bad to much worse. Rather the book is about the consequences for a small group of survivors - Roy, a hitman and enforcer; Sol, who makes a living pinching cars and breaking them up for part; Mel, Sol's ex, who runs a brothel - but most of all, a woman known only as Y.

Y exemplifies the fate of many subject to trafficking between this decaying Manchester and an even worse - and even stranger - place, where she is subject to barbaric experiments alongside many "brothers" and "sisters". While only one of many imprisoned in "The Mansion" she seems particularly important: again, we never learn why - just as we don't really find out what the point is of what is done there. At first sight it's just done for profit, but the sophistication of the setup seems to suggest there may be more going on?

Hill is particularly good when evoking the strange parallel world surrounding The Mansion or the grimy, dying North West - whether a shattered Manchester ("Ahead, the sky's shod in black-blue bruise"; "Everywhere she looked she found blackened spires: chimneys, pipes, cable, gantries") , a decaying Knutsford services or the wreck of a car ("a Ford, possibly") whose fate - driven beyond ruin yet still somehow carrying on - seems to stand for an entire country (world? but MSF is operating in Manchester so perhaps this fate has only overtaken the UK) teetering on the brink of Hell but never quite tipping over. At the same time he has great delicacy of touch, and alongside the action filled plot - all fights, killings, explosions and car chases - there is a real tenderness to the story of Sol, Mel and Y.

Sol has done bad things, unforgivable things. He knows how far he has fallen and can't face it. He still has a connection with Mel and seeks her help - or is he seeking her forgiveness? If so that's doubly ironic as he will be bringing down real danger on her and what she's built. But then Sol is not a good man, even if he's an interesting hero.

It is though Y who is really the centre of this book: robbed of her name, voice and memories, she needs to discover a place in this new world - apart from the fate - never spelled out clearly but certainly not nice - willed for her by her makers. She'll use anyone to achieve this but, in the end, she has to do it for herself, face the Manor Lord, whatever - whoever - he is.

A searing book, but an excellent, cracking read.