Review - The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t with her Mind

Cover by Steve Panton

The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t with her Mind
Jackson Ford
Orbit, 20 June 2019
PB, 444pp

I'm grateful to Nazia at Orbit for a free advance copy of this book.

The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t with her Mind is Jackson Ford's debut novel, it's published today, and you should read it.

Teagan Frost is having a bad day at work. A VERY bad day. It begins when a routine job goes wrong, endangering her and a colleague, gets worse when her boss gives her a carpeting for how she got out of that situation, and positively implodes when she's framed for murder and has to go on the run as the city of Los Angeles burns around her.

Oh, due to being on the run, she has to miss a date with a nice, single man at THE up and coming restaurant in LA.

And she hasn't slept in 48 hours.

Welcome to the world of The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t with her Mind. Teagan is The Girl, and she can, indeed, move - stuff - mentally, a talent referred to as psychokinesis (Boss Paul won't let her call it PK for reasons explained herein). That talent's employed in the service of a secretive branch of Government, Teagan's cooperation the price she pays for not being taken away to a secret lab and vivisected to find out how she works. It doesn't make her very happy, but it's a living, and as long as she's living, she can dream and plan about opening her own restaurant.

I just LOVED this book. It's a non-stop, hectic chase around the seedy side of LA (presented with no glitz and glamour: somewhat reminiscent of Joseph Wambaugh's LA based police procedurals) as Teagan and her colleagues seek to establish her innocence while a mysterious opponent plays them from street to street, mall to mall and scuzzy diner to scuzzy diner. And that fire just keeps getting closer.

Written largely from Teagan's point of view and giving us a lively, if rather pissed-off, protagonist who's perhaps just a little too persuaded that she's right and that everyone around her is stupid, the book is nothing if not engaging. For a story with such a gaping, fanatical premise - PK is real, people, and can be genetically engineered - the writing makes it very believable. Getting the register and attitude of a bored, annoyed and overtired employee in a dead end job just right, Ford evokes roughly the same psychological/ bureaucratic space as Charles Stross's Laundry books, except that Teagan's not a diffident English male geek but a forthright LA woman with views on everything, especially food. And rap music. And her colleagues. And did I mention food?

It is, really, simply fun and a joy to read - though it does go to some very dark places. Teagan's Nemesis, whose point of view also features, is a truly grim and mixed-up person, especially dangerous for being convinced of being right (and, indeed, having some degree of justice to back that up) and does some truly grim and mixed-up things. And, as I've said, the book doesn't spare us the seamier side of the city, presenting the paradox of a vast area where the homeless live in tents amidst the wealth of one of the world's richest cities. There are also gangs, corruption and a particularly nasty black-ops soldier who really has it in for Teagan.

When you see what Teagan has to go before she can have a meal, a sleep and a beer, you won't be surprised how cross she gets - but you might be surprised by the results...

In all, a great read and, yes, I can see this becoming a popular and I hope long-running series. I wouldn't want to work with Teagan Frost but I do want to read more about her, please Mr Ford and please, O Orbit.

For more about the book, see the Orbit website here.

Review - Exit Wounds (edited by Paul B Kane and Marie O'Regan)

Cover design by Julia Lloyd

Exit Wounds
Edited by Paul B Kane and Marie O'Regan
Titan Books, 21 May 2019
PB, 381pp

I'm grateful to Titan for a free advance copy of Exit Wounds

I love a good themed anthology, I find an anthology does several things for me, as a reader. First, if well chosen (and the authors in this one are among the best) their perspectives (what's the right word for a gang of authors? A plot?) can shed more light – or dark – on a subject than any single writer could.

Here, that theme is the “exit” from a crime – or a criminal situation. That exit might be a death, or an escape, or more loosely the winding down of the events. It’s perceptive, I think, to focus on this aspect when a great deal of crime writing deals with the before – the build-up – and / or the after – the investigation. Here attention is mainly on the cusp after one, and before the other. Although in some of these stories (such as Joe R Lansdale' Booty and the Beast) the exit may have been long ago.

Another valuable service anthologies serve is giving authors space to tackle things a bit differently, to visit aspects of their fiction that might not be enough for a full-blown novel but, nevertheless, fill in details or illustrate ideas that are useful in understanding the whole. So for example here in Steph Broadribb's Fool You Twice we see an early adventure of her hero Lori Anderson.  I am and always have been a member of #TeamLori, a fan of Broadribb’s indefatigable bounty hunter, former exotic dancer, and mother so it was a delight to read this, the earliest story about her, showing how she made a start on her own – and that she was, form the very beginning, capable, brave, determined and on the side of the angels. And in John Connolly's splendidly named On the Anatomization of an Unknown Man (1637) by Frans Mier we see a dark world that might, or might not, fit with his Fractured Atlas universe: having just read Connolly’s A Book of Bones I read out that way though there is no explicit connection: but the shadowy demi-monde of artists, surgeons and anatomists hinted at here could be taking place behind that story. In particular the creeping doubt over just what this story is and how it related to the painting being described is delightfully creepy.

The final joy of an anthology like this is that you’re certain to pick up accessible writing both by authors you know and those you don't - whether the latter are ones you have wanted to try but haven’t got round to, and by those you didn't know, but can now explore in future. Overall, a triple win, I’d say.

So here are nineteen stories, most of them published here for the first time, and all excellent.

The Bully by Jeffery Deaver is a neat little story, reflecting Deaver’s encyclopaedic knowledge of forensics, in which you understand everything that’s happening – until you don’t. Dead Weight by Fiona Cummins is a bleak tale in which Lula suffers repeated psychological abuse and body-shaming from her controlling mother. There are some stomach churning moments of realisation here. Were there hints about the mother’s motivations? I wasn’t sure but this really left an impression.

I really enjoyed Like a Glass Jaw by Mark Billingham. Dealing, I think, with how women and men cope differently with their lives, we meet a man of the old school (he notes that there were mainly women at his gym session, so no pressure on him), perhaps a bit of a villain, though past his prime. A spiral of events leads him somewhere he didn’t intend to be, -but was the whole thing a result of the male outlook adding two and two to make five? I also loved Sarah Hilary's The Pitcher which reminded me of Roald Dahl or Joan Aiken (Marmalade Wine) at their very best, a deliciously wicked little tale with a decided “aha!” moment - a very chilling moment.

I wondered if stretching things to call Discipling by Martin Waites a crime story, pure and simple, though there is an (implied) exit, as this is I think a story with no victim. Or at least no unwilling victim. Nevertheless I wouldn't have had it left out.

The Consumers by Dennis LeHane is more conventionally crime-y, a bitter little story, featuring an abused wife and a hitman. For a short story it packs in a great deal, including reflections on personal responsibility, culpability and the sources of wealth. The exit sought here looks like an easy way out, but life has a habit of being complicated. Another of my favourites in this anthology.

The next two in the anthology, Voices Through the Wall by Alex Gray and Lee Child's Wet With Rain are both definitely aftermath stories. In Voices, the offender is wholly absent - leaving an echo of dis-ease - and we're simply left to wonder as we piece together a sad chain of events. In Wet With Rain,  almost a mini thriller, we follow a pair of Americans who are clearly up to something dodgy in Northern Ireland, with their implausible story about buying up the birthplace of a noted writer - but what do they really want? I had sort of guessed the "what" from a couple of clues in the text - but the "what next" completely blindsided me.

I will now make a terrible confusion. Until reading this anthology I hadn't ever read any Val McDermid. (I know!) Now I know what I'm missing. Happy Holidays features McDermid's criminal profiler Dr Tony Hill and DCI Carol Jordan, investigating a series of murders that seem themed around traditional holidays. When Santa disappears, things seem to have become serious. But what is really behind the chain of grisly killings?

Christopher Fowler's Lebensraum, in contrast, reads less as a specifically crime adventure - though there is a background of villainy in it - than as an allegory. It's a story of an old woman whose house is progressively taken over by strangers - loud strangers how strut around in uniforms and speak of their "cause". Illustrating the theme of "Exit Wounds" almost perfectly, the narrator almost seems to be fading from her own life. Whether at the end she's a symbol of endurance or a victim is unclear. A powerful and disturbing story.

Mark Billingham's Dancing Towards the Blade is another story that ends on a note of ambiguity. Billingham's story sees cultures collide as Vincent - a young man of colour -  encounters racist bullies on his run down estate. Cutting between the bleakness of that confrontation and the vibrant coming of age ceremony for, I think, his father, Dancing Towards the Blade, like Lebensraum confronts the realities of newly confident racism and hatred.

Kittens by Dean Koontz is perhaps another story of hatred but on a more domestic scale. It is both grim and sad - read it at your peril! Featuring a bullying and ignorant father who warps religion to terrorise his daughter, it is strong stuff as is AK Benedict's Take my Hand. Benedict is another writer I look out for. I wish there was more by her I could read so I was delighted to see this half-crime, half-spooky story about a nasty museum exhibit and the plans of some nasty schoolchildren to make mischief with it. Definitely one of my favourites. Dressed to Kill byJames Oswald has aspects on common with Take My Hand (I'll say no more - spoilers!) as a series of deaths come to light which bear striking similarities. The only problem is, they are murder/ suicides and they take place decades apart....

There's a twist of dark humour to the final three stories in this volume. Joe R Lansdale's Booty and the Beast is almost a comic caper, as three villains jostle for the legacy of a lone-gone crime. (Exits, again) They seem to be three particularly vile people and the way things turn out - another exit - is curiously satisfying. In Paul Finch's The New Lad – almost novella length - we see what Greater Manchester Police do with the new boy in the team. They put him on duty guarding a lonely crime scene late at night on his own, ion course. Deploying the full register of spooky scares, twists and foreshadowing, this story is a miniature masterpiece in tension. Finally, in Louise Jensen's The Recipe, the husband has already exited, leaving his middle-aged wife to pick up the pieces of her life. She seems to be managing very well, but will the arrival of her sister bring unwelcome memories?

These are entertaining, varied stories, almost all compulsively readable. Do give them a try.

For more information about the book, see the publisher's website here. To buy Exit Wounds, why not make a trip to your local crime scene - sorry, bookshop - or buy online from Hive Books which supports some local shops. Or you can get it from Blackwell's, Waterstones or Amazon.

Review - The Rig by Roger Levy

Design by Julia Lloyd

The Rig
Roger Levy
Titan Books, 8 May 2018
PB, 615pp

I'm grateful to Titan for an advance copy of this book.

How to sum up The Rig? The Godfather in space, but more tricksy? A SPACE noir? The apotheosis of social media?

None of those are quite right - but they all have a bit of truth.

In the future, Earth is abandoned to ecological catastrophe and humanity has migrated to the System to live on terraformed worlds. It's a hard life (one of those planets is simply called 'Bleak' and it lives up to that) and a short one, fifty being a good age. Contradicting shiny expectations of the future, disease hasn't been conquered (several of the characters here suffer form incurable cancer) and corruption is widespread. Star Trek this isn't.

But with things so hard, and religion - 'goddery' - generally disdained, people need something to believe in and this role is taken by AfterLife, a system of preserving the near-dead in stasis until their condition is curable. Memories are harvested first, and when cures are found, public votes - based on the lives of the preserved - determine who will receive them.

Against this background, two very different boys meet on the sole remaining 'religious' planet, Gehenna, a place of harshly fundamentalist beliefs. (Actually there is another - referred to as 'the unsaid planet', a place so fiercely protective of its secrets that even to mention it risks death). Pellonhorc is cruel, mercurial and obsessive. Alef has difficulty empathising and thinks in numbers. (I sense the author has autism in mind but he doesn't say so). They seem an odd pairing but, forced together by events, go on to be friends - of a sort - and, as the book's blurb says, to remake the System. Certainly their relationship is at the centre of this book. It's complex, incomplete and at times baffling, but drives both men.

The book follows Alef's life forwards through 'SigEvs' - significant events - which are supposed to be what the voter will use to decide whether a subject is to be cured or left in suspended animation. At the same time, we see a separate story unfold, told from various points of view in the hardscrabble town of Lookout, on the planet Bleak. The main characters here are a policeman (Bale) a journalist/ writer (Razer) and an engineer  (Tallen).

Bale has been suspended from duty after joining the pursuit of a serial killer while off duty, and while drunk. Razor has been sent by her AI, Cynth, to record Bale's 'TruTale'. And Tallen, well - Tallen wakes up one day in hospital and is never the same again.

This part of the story is twisty and - with its grim streets, hard bitten cops and air of sleaze and corruption - supplies the nourish tinge to the book, as Bale and then Razer attempt to work our what's been going on. Some kind of cover up, seemingly - but of what? And why? Whatever it is, it's worth killing for and everyone who gets near it seems to be in danger. There's a real atmosphere of menave  here and a distinct sense that nothing is what it seems: trust nobody, not even yourself.

It's a violent book, with plenty of death. Some of this is foreseen (all that disease) or foreseeable (given all that gangsterism), some of it comes out of the blue (despite the efforts of the Lookout policy). There's no saying who will be next, and doubly so once the two parts of the story emerges, which only happens slowly. Indeed it's not till the last hundred pages or so that it all really begins to fit together. If you love a slowly unfolding, satisfying mystery then you'll enjoy this, likewise if you're a fan of convincing, well thought out world building. On the evidence of this book, Levy excels in creating beautiful, and believable, worlds and it helps that this is a longish book, so he can take his time to build up the atmosphere, whether of the seedy town with its dives and pre fab housing, the underground racetracks through which hurricane winds blow, or the heaving seas containing the rigs which are the key to Bleak's economy. He warps language itself to indicate the alienness of the System, even if it is peopled by humans - so, we have, as well as 'doddery', 'putter' and 'screenery' and a slew of tongue twisting character names (Pelonhorc, but also Pireve, Dixemexid, Maerleyand and so on).

Overall a weirdly thrilling slice of SF, with a great deal of human reality to it and some great characters. One not to miss.

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

Review - Victory Disc by Andrew Cartmel

Cover design by Martin Stiff

Victory Disc (Vinyl Detective, 3)
Andrew Cartmel
Titan Books, 8 May 2018
PB, 432pp

I'm grateful to Titan for an advance copy of this book.

This is the 3rd in the series featuring the (unnamed) Vinyl Detective, his girlfriend Nevada, annoying best friend Tinkler, getaway driver Clean Head and, of course, cats Turk and Fanny. The setup is well established - the Vinyl Collector hunts down old records, and his commissions typically involve him in a historical mystery, which has enough echoes in the present to threaten considerable danger.

Victory Disc is no exception, but takes the gang out of their comfort zone (if being threatened, drugged, burgled or kidnapped can be so described) as the hunt is for even older and rarer records than before - specifically for wartime recordings of the RAF's Flare Path Orchestra, a band of serving airmen purportedly set up to compete with the Glenn Miller Orchestra. The Flare Path Orchestra wasn't, of course, real, the Miller band (of course) was. Yet Cartmel has an amazing knack for describing  (totally fictitious) music so convincingly that you're almost there, listening to it. Very evocative, as is the name Flare Path Orchestra itself which made me think of Terrance Rattigan's play Flare Path, also set against the background of bomber crews in the Second World War.

Of course there's a mystery to be unravelled here, the murder of a young woman, Gillian Gadon, during the war, for which a young RAF officer was hanged. (I strongly approved of the fact that in this story Nevada insists on using Gadon's name, making her more than simply an object of male violence). This backstory intertwines with a commission, in the present, by the wealthy Miss Honeyland, to hunt down any serviving records by the Orchestra whose leader was her father, "Lucky" Lucian Honeyland. (One slight gripe: Honeyland's is described as "Colonel" - not an RAF rank, I think). That sets The Vinyl Detective (or the Shellac Shamus, as Nevada describes him now that he's delving into the age of 78s) tracking down surviving members of the band, widening his knowledge of the wartime bombing campaign (at the heart of the book there is, among other things, a compassionate argument about the cruelty of that campaign and its effect both on German cities and on the aircrew themselves).

This is Cartmel at his best, sending the team off on a series of rackety day trips to obscure corners of Kent, portraying the foibles and varied lives of the surviving band/ squadron members while throwing in an eclectic gallery of record eccentric collectors, menacing thugs, murder historians and, inevitably, more cats (poor Abner...) It all moves pretty briskly and - another thing I like in these books - the crew behave intelligently, understanding (from previous adventures) that there may be danger out there. Not that this makes the book staid or boring - it has a pretty scary climax and the revelations that follow complete a satisfying story, bringing the crimes of the past right into the present and showing how evil persists. Indeed there is something of a sense of urgency to the story and a demand to question appearances and remain vigilant. Another strong theme is erasure, particularly of artists (that's a vein consistently explored in all these books).

In all this was an exciting and atmospheric mystery and a good addition to the Vinyl Detective's casebook. I note that a further instalment, Flip Back, is due in 2019 and I wish the anonymous record-finder and his partner plenty of good, fresh coffee and decent food in their next outing.

Final note: while Cartmel avoids using the Collector's name - how long can he keep that up? - he does use pronouns, so I'm not just falling into a lazy assumption that the character is male!

For more about the book see the publisher's website here.

Review - Dark Cities

Dark Cities
ed by Christopher Golden
Titan Books, 16 May 2017
PB, 400pp

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

Everyone knows a street that doesn't feel right. Where the light from the streetlamps feels sour and spoiled, like bitter honey. Where the shadows are too deep and too dark, and creep up on you when you're not looking...

I love a good anthology and this collection of horror stories attracted straight away. There is so much to say about the city, so much to appal - whether it's those unexplored turnings that might take you into a strange new place from which you can't return, an abandoned building in which... who knows what... may lurk, all the layers of lives and history which are there just under the surface, or just the oddness of life among all those mostly anonymous people. 

As with any collection, the various contributions grip and enthral to different degrees, but this is overall a very strong collection. For me the first and the last stories in this book were the most unsettling. In The Dogs (Scott Smith), the first story, Rose knows that her pastime meeting up with men off Craigslist may be risky but she knows what she's doing. And surely an apartment with three friendly dogs can't be too wrong... can it? This is a story that keeps you guessing and is truly horrific, though I felt the author did perhaps employ one over used device that wasn't really needed.

The last story, The Crack by Nick Cutter,  was queasily upsetting. As a father I know that feeling when the young baby just won't sleep. As a father I also find the determination of the father in this book - the mother hardly features - to stamp his will on the helpless infant repulsive, crossing the line into abuse. The supernatural that creeps up on both of them is scarcely registered at first, bound up as Daddy is in making his little boy into a strong man: in many respects, in this story, it's the human that's the monster and in that respect it fits well with the overall feel of the book, although as the events mainly take place within a single house it arguably isn't particularly a city story. 

In Stone (Tim Lebbon), our unnamed narrator, unable to sleep well after the suicide of his friend Nigel, roams the streets of the city at night. One of those nights he spots a woman and follows her. Lebbon creates a nice balance between the haunted, despairing life of the narrator and the darkness of the city and its brooding dominance over those it notices.

Like Lebbon, in The Way She Is With Strangers Helen Marshall leaves much unsaid. What exactly did happen to Mercy's daughter? How is it affected by her having come to the city? Again there are dark secrets here and one senses that the progression of events mirrors something private we're not quite seeing. Atmospheric, creepy and despairing.

MR Carey's We'll Always have Paris has a lighter tone, welcome after the preceding dark stories. Inspector Philemon is one of the city's top detectives and is assigned to investigate a series of horrible murders. He jostles with rivals in this, such as Riordan, of the Garda and it becomes clear that somehow, Paris has become scrambled up with Dublin, New York, Berlin, London... just what's going on and how is it associated with the murders? An inventive and disturbing story.

With Good Night, Prison Kings, Cherie Priest dials us back towards the grim in a powerful tale of a murdered girl seeking revenge as does Amber Benson in What I’ve Always Done, an unsettling story of obsession, revenge and love gone sour, showing how in the city, anything can be  a trap. Traps are a frequent theme in this book - the city's a maze and it's a maze set with snares. But not everything wandering it is monster and in Grit by Jonathan Maberry we meet on of the good guys, albeit one who's definitely a bit tarnished – bounty hunter Monk Addisson, who has a very strange relationship with his fugitives, which  can last beyond their deaths.

Dark Hill Run by Kasey and Joe R Lansdale features a rather different pursuer and a pursuit that lasts years then we're back to the traps with Happy Forever by Simon R Green, the sad story  – of a girl frozen in time

In The Society of the Monsterhood by Paul Tremblay the threat and tension comes from the unseen narrator and the people of the neighbourhood ('we') who have taken against a group of bright kids offered a free place at a suburban school. Somehow the situation seems to conjure a monster: but is it real? This story is very powerful, the style giving a real sense of the exclusion of the little group and narrator's complicity. Field Trip by Tananarive Due addresses exclusion in a different form - a short trip on the subway leads astray young teacher taking her class home from a trip?  With a powerful and unsettling background in racial prejudice and police violence this story literalises the idea of people becoming nothing. 

With The Revellers by Christopher Golden we encounter some real 24 hour party people! In New York! Endless PARTY! But what happens when you can't find your way out again? Ramsay Campbell asks the same question, in a way, in The Stillness. Campbell has an unerring eye for the creepy, the wrong, in modern life. If you've ever seen a living statue in full sunlight on a crowded street and thought about it, um, then imagine meeting one at dusk in an empty ally.  

Imagine it following you home...

Moving from the modern world back to fantasy, or sorts, in Sanctuary by Kealan Patrick Burke, which, with The Crack and Graffiti of the Lost and Dying Places was my favourite story in the book, a young boy exists in two worlds. There is the normal one, where he is wounded by a family break-up, and a truly strange place (the pub has darts made from bones wrapped in leather). He seeks sanctuary, but in which of the worlds? And from which? And why is the end coming?

Matter of Life and Death by Sherrilyn Kenyon is a story to make the publisher tremble! Helga East, the author from Hell is dead, and her editor rejoices. But something strange is afoot in the bank building across the way. And even stranger things begin to happen in their office. A spooky and twisty story - written with some feeling about authors and publishers...

In Graffiti of the Lost and Dying Places,  Seanan McGuire evokes an eerie sense of dissolution as a rundown district is gentrified, gradually killed off by the encroachment of a shiny new financial quarter. What might the old bricks and plaster do when attacked so?

Overall, a strong collection with something for everybody.

Review - Hekla's Children

Hekla's Children
James Brogden
Titan Books, 7 March 2017
PB, 397pp

I'm grateful to Lydia Gittins at Titan Books for an advance copy of Hekla's Children.

A decade ago, teacher Nathan Brookes saw four of his students walk up a hill and vanish. Only one returned – Olivia – starved, terrified, and with no memory of where she’d been. After a body is found in the same woodland where they disappeared it is rest believed to be one of the missing children, but is soon identified as a Bronze Age warrior, nothing more than an archaeological curiosity. Yet Nathan starts to have terrifying visions of the students. Then Olivia reappears, half-mad and willing to go to any lengths to return the corpse to the earth. For he is the only thing keeping a terrible evil at bay...

I greatly enjoyed this clever, multi-faceted novel. Rooted in landscape and myth, it explores - but in its own way - some of the same territory of "post portal stress" as, say, Alan Garner's Boneland or Seanan McGuire's Every Heart a Doorway: children disappear into the Perilous Realm, and come back... and then what?

One of the reasons I liked it so much can't really be gone into without a BIG spoiler, so I've discussed that at the end of the review. I'd advise you now to read that bit till you've read the book. (And you MUST read the book!)

So, we have children - well, teens - scooped Somewhere Else and the aftermath of that in at least one mixed jp life. But the events that summoned Ryan, Scattie, Liv and Bran are not over and done with - though they are rooted in the distant past. In a time of sudden death, of bad harvests and cold, a hungry ghost prowls the forests, an afaugh. As a defence, a tribe choose their best and bravest warrior and set him to guard the paths between the worlds. "Then we'll set a man to watch" as the old rhyme has it: Barkfoot too protects a bridge. But time brings forgetfulness, the Spirit Dances cease and offerings are no longer made - and in the 21st century, archaeologist Tara Doumani is called to examine a mummified body found in a Midlands park. Could it connected to the children who went missing nine years before?

No, she concludes, it's older than that. But doubts begin to creep in: Nathan, the teacher who was responsible for those kids turns up, having begin to see them around him and he, in turn, looks up his ex, now happily married and horrified that the past is coming alive again.

And in the dark places, something hungry is waiting.

"This is happening now. It is always happening..."

I was impressed by the way that Brogden weaves together all these viewpoint characters - and more in fact but I don't want to give too much away! - into a coherent story. It's unsettling at first, especially as we soon realise that some accounts are being held back, and in fact a major character doesn't therefore come on the scene until two thirds of the way into the book. And other characters change their role pretty drastically as things go on.

Nathan's is perhaps the main viewpoint: we see his pain at the "loss" of the kids but also his self-absorption in his (lack of) a relationship with Sue - which is what arguably causes the kids to be unsupervised in the first place. Nine years on he's determined to get to the bottom of things (and reclaim his lover?)

We also see his quest for the facts, which challenges conventional understanding of history, myth, reality and indeed time itself. One of the more amusing aspects of this is the struggle that those most rational of professions, the police force and the archaeologists, have when the facts won't fit.

Again, Brogden masterfully knits together history, myth and the topography of the West Midlands (not the most promising of landscapes - compared, say, to Garner's Alderley edge) so that everything does - in the end - make sense. In doing so he also addresses a very modern archaeological concern - what should be done with ancient human remains - and strongly suggests they shouldn't simply be dug up and taken away. Arising first where Western investigation has disturbed indigenous
burials, this issue has now, as it were, come home and so we see a campaign against the excavation of "Rowton man" as vans are wrecked and graffiti - "PUT HIM BACK" appears in various places.

Why, exactly, who "he" is, and what he has become are all questions central to this book. They need to be answered, but the point is not just just to understand things, but to change them. Because that hungry ghost is still out there and the answers are needed if it is to be stopped. But we don't just need answers, we need a champion. Who that might be is something you may guess, or you may not. I'll just say that the denouement, when it comes, is satisfying, and right - and when you read it you'll realise perhaps that one of the main themes of the story hasn't quite been what you thought.

A great adventure, involving writing and lots to turn over in your mind.

Strongly recommended.

And now for that spoilery bit. Carry on below if you dare!