Trevor Riddell travels with his father to their crumbling ancestral home in rural Washington state. It is the summer of 1990, and his parents are having a trial separation. Fourteen year old Trevor knows he has to do everything he can to help get their marriage back on track. The house lies in a huge estate, overlooking Puget Sound, and is reportedly haunted.

I was expecting this to be quite a tough read. It’s author, Garth Stein, wrote the international bestseller The Art of Racing in the Rain which I always assumed would be wordy and literary. However the prose was great – cleanly written, atmospheric and unpretentious. Despite dealing with some very dark themes, it does feel almost like it’s aimed at the YA (young adult) market. The setting is wonderfully evocative, rich in texture and atmosphere, with an interesting setup with just a few characters. the relationship between the various family members was intriguing, with the text hinting at secrets and a complex history. I really enjoying hearing about the history of the family, albeit some of the documents meant to have been written at the start of the last century (and the dialogue in some of the dream sequences or flashbacks) felt a little modern for that time.

A Sudden Light is an excellent coming of age story, one that isn’t too demanding, yet with enough surprises and emotion to thoroughly enjoy it. There is a real gothic sense to the proceedings, with an underlying aura of tragedy. The house itself is almost a prominent character in the story. I’d definitely be interested in reading more of Stein’s work. Recommended.

In the 1940s an Argentinian librarian gives a secret manuscript to a private investigator. The document was written in 1928 by none other than the famous consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes, who is living under the guise of a German professor teaching at Cambridge university. Doctor Watson has died so Holmes has been trying to keep his mind active as he sees out his final days. One day he is visited by an author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who asks him to look into some information he received at a recent spiritual séance he attended. The case involves multiple worlds, Edgar Allan Poe, Ernest Hemingway, Mrs Hudson, and many other meta-themes.

I can’t claim to be a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes. I read all of the Doyle stories and novels when I was a teenager but I’ve never bothered reading any of the raft of subsequent novels that have been written since. However I do find the character utterly fascinating, and generally enjoy fiction set in Victorian London.

I thought this was okay. It’s quite well-written, if unlike the style of Conan Doyle when writing as Doctor Watson. But the plot explains this by the way Holmes apologises for his rather wandering narrative, suggesting that Watson has a far more active method of writing than he has.

The plot is convoluted and preposterous but I suppose that’s part of the fun of it. It’s a short novel and I had fun reading it but it wasn’t enough to make me seek out anything else of the author’s work, or bother reading any other Sherlock Holmes tales by other writers. I’d recommend this to fans of Sherlock Holmes, but no one else.

Jasper Wishart, 13 years old, lives with his dad on an ordinary street. His neighbours are ordinary. However Jasper is anything but ordinary. He sees the world completely different. He can’t recognise faces, even his own. He loves painting and parakeets and is struggling to deal with the death of his mum. His world is both more colourful and frightening than ours. He suffers from synaesthesia, as well as being autistic. When a young woman, Bee Larkham, moves onto the street, she causes a disturbance among the inhabitants. Her appearance sets in motion a chain of events that leads to her death. Jasper has to piece together the information he has – trying to work out if he’s processed it correctly – in an effort to solve the murder of who killed Bee Larkham.

I really wanted to like this novel. First of all it’s a British murder mystery, it involves an interesting central character with a fascinating mental disorder, and it’s a whodunnit. But the truth of the matter is I was left a bit disappointed. I have never given up on a novel I’ve started reading, but the first half of this book was a real slog. I wasn’t enjoying it at all. Whilst the part about synaesthesia and austism were very interesting (I assume they were factually-based) the plot itself felt rather boring. I wasn’t particularly invested in the other characters. I think a lot of this is to do with the way the plot develops – we can only see things through Jasper’s eyes – so the voice of the narrative tended to over-emphasise the colours and moods rather than clues and story points. The secondary characters felt a bit vague and confusing. Which is exactly the way Jasper sees them.

However I’m glad I stuck with the rest of the novel because the second half of the book is much more revealing, and because of that, satisfying. By that point we’re understanding Jasper’s worldview, and are able to jump ahead a bit and make guesses at what really happened. It reminded me of a cross between Mark Haddon’s ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ and LP Hartley’s ‘The Go-Between’. Jasper is, due to his synaesthesia and autism, an unreliable narrator, and there is much for the reader to work out. If I’d read just to the halfway point of the novel I’d have felt this was a 1 star book. By finishing it I’d give it 3 stars. There are quite dark themes here, which feel even more acute because of Jasper’s rather innocent view of things. Not a disaster, by any stretch of the imagination, but not one I could really recommend. I did get a decent insight into both synaesthesia and autism, and I also learned that there are parakeets living in Britain, but for me the plot wasn’t particularly engaging.

When Oliver and Rosie’s daughter is injured in a hit and run accident, she suffers brain damage and her personality is altered. Upon being granted a payout for the accident, Oliver decides to use the money to set up a bookshop, something he’s longed to do for many years. They purchase an old church in which to live, with the bookshop forming the lower level of the building. One day they come across a scabby-looking crow, who refuses to leave.

This is quite a difficult novel to read, not because the prose is poor – it certainly isn’t, quite the opposite – but because of the writing style. It begins simply enough, but as the story develops, so does the gradual spiral into madness and the inexorable mental descent of Oliver and his relationship to Rosie and Chloe. The descriptive passages are wonderful, creating a beautifully icy depiction of Nottingham. There’s a dreamlike quality to the prose, which mirrors the story and Oliver’s sense of dislocation and detachment. Gregory is superb at teasing out the sinister aspect of birds – this theme features in many of his books – and it’s brilliantly entangled into the story. The shadow of Edgar Allan Poe is also present in much of his writing, and here it acts as a perfect counterbalance to Oliver’s guilt. I would say it’s a novel that’s definitely not formulaic, despite the Poe influence, and one that works well against the backdrop of contemporary Britain.

But beneath all of the gothic madness and macabre detail, the novel hints at something even darker. This aspect only really reveals itself after the book is finished, once you’ve closed the pages and let the story settle on your mind. There are a couple of moments that hint at something horrific lurking in the darkest recesses of Oliver’s subconscious, something that’s subtle and delicately handled, and yet might be too strong for some readers.

I thought this was a great novel. Even if you know little about Edgar Allan Poe, you’ll still enjoy this, but if you’re a fan you’ll delight at the little references. Recommended.

Hyperion House, standing high in the hills of Southern Spain, seems like an ideal home for Callie and Meteo, an architectural student and her wine importer husband. The grand old house has been designed to ensure that it is filled with light for as much time as possible, which is perfect for Callie, who suffers from nyctophobia (an extreme fear of the dark). It also comes complete with a mute gardener and a sinister housekeeper. Oh, and a section of the rear of the house that is locked, and appears to be permanently steeped in darkness…

I’ve been a fan of Chris Fowler’s work for many years. More recently he’s been writing the Bryant and May strange detective novels, of which I read the first few (and enjoyed them) but for some reason have lapsed (too many books, too little time!) but I’d like to pick them up again at some point.

I read Nyctophobia because it was a standalone novel, self contained and instantly accessible. The pacing of the book is great. Read the first paragraph and you’re hooked. By the time I had finished the first chapter I was expecting a fairly standard haunted house novel, but was entirely happy to journey on, as Fowler’s writing is so strong. However, as the story progressed I realised that there was so much more to the novel than a haunted house story. The half-light, half-dark aspect of the house is particularly fascinating. Fowler includes a couple of scenes where the characters venture into the ‘other realms’ of the house and the action is unbelievably creepy. The description of the souls that inhabit the dark side (originally the servants’ quarters) are horrific and nightmarish. And there’s a sequence involving a hornet’s nest that feels brutal and heart-breaking.

Nyctophobia is an unpretentious, fast-paced slice of horror. Whilst it’s difficult to say it reinvents the haunted house novel, it does at least attempt to try something different with the trope, and undoubtedly pulls it off. The Spanish location is evocative and interesting – Fowler clearly knows Spain and the Spanish ways – and there’s the perfect balance between scary scenes and Callie’s fascinating research into the mysterious history of Hyperion House. I really enjoyed reading this, and it has given me fresh impetus to return to the Bryant and May series. Fowler is a natural writer. You really feel you’re in good hands when reading one of his books. Definitely recommended.

Jackson Smith is attending a job interview at a high-rise business building in the city when he sees a man take his own life. Further horrific events take place, challenging Smith’s sanity, and drawing on his last self-preservation as he fights to escape the building and the ensuing madness.

The Sleeping Dead is a fast-paced, real-time novella set in a recognisably British town. I read the book in an entire setting, something I very rarely do nowadays. From the start, Barber manages to wring every ounce of tension from the punchy, clean prose to deliver something greater than its parts. It’s fair to say the story isn’t ever going to win awards for its originality, but to dismiss it as derivative is to do the novella a massive disservice. To that degree, reading the synopsis tells nowhere near the real story. There’s a wonderful thrill to the set-pieces, a couple of which I’m sure will stay with me for a long time. Barber writes with verve, and his descriptive prose has an economy which allows the pace to never let up, all of which befit the story. The length of the piece exactly fits the story he’s telling; any more and I feel the tension would have been stretched, any less and it would have felt incomplete.
All in all, if you don’t mind something quite dark and unrelenting, this is a novella I’d definitely recommend.

When Colonel Harris is murdered in Warwickshire, Inspector Ian Rutledge of Scotland Yard is dispatched north to investigate his murder. It is 1919 and the country is still reeling from the after-effects of the Great War. Rutledge, himself a veteran of the conflict, has his own demons to contend with, alongside the pressure of having to bring the guilty to justice. He is a broken man, damaged by what he experienced in the war, an imaginary companion constantly dogging him – the voice in his head of a young Scottish soldier called Hamish that Rutledge condemned to the firing squad. Piecing together the clues and puzzles of the mystery takes a great deal of conviction on the Inspector’s part.

Interestingly, Charles Todd – the pseudonym of a mother-and-son writing team from the United States – has written 26 of the Ian Rutledge mysteries so far, starting with this one in 1994. I had never heard of them before, although it does seem like they are far more popular in the US. I picked up this novel on the basis of the interesting premise – the central investigator’s sidekick as the imaginary Hamish as opposed to a faithful sergeant or Doctor Watson character – and the fact that I enjoy a good old murder mystery set during the golden age of crime fiction. Initially I was sceptical of an American being able to make the English characters and settings ‘authentically’ British, but I needn’t have worried. For the most part there is barely anything to betray that this wasn’t written by a Brit. There’s a level of detail to the book that indicates the writers have researched well or are keen history enthusiasts.

The plot itself is fairly straightforward, with the murderer’s reveal a decent enough twist. The story hangs together well, with just enough suspects to keep you guessing. It wasn’t the most intricate plot, but the characters are well fleshed out and there are several scenes that stuck in my mind after closing the book. A big criticism of murder mysteries is that the plot comes at the expense of characterisation; I’d say this is quite the reverse. Not the best, or most exciting mystery I’ve recently read, but an interesting one nonetheless. I think it’s fair to say that it’s clearly a first novel, but one that has enough quality about it to say I’ll definitely be seeking out further books in the series, and seeing how the character of Inspector Rutledge develops. Worth reading if you like this kind of thing.

Widower Malcolm Kershaw manages a book store in Boston. One snowy morning he is contacted by an FBI agent, Gwen Mulvey, who wants to talk to him about a blog post he wrote years before, where he detailed his favourite eight perfect murders from fiction. These were The Red House Mystery by A A Milne, Malice Aforethought by Anthony Berkley Cox, The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie, Double Indemnity by James M Cain, Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith, The Drowner by John D MacDonald, Deathtrap by Ira Levin, and The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Now it looks like someone is committing murders in a way that imitates the deaths in these stories. What follows is a cat and mouse game of murder, suspects, and twists as several of the characters tries to outmanoeuvre one another, with murderous consequences.

I’ve always been a sucker for stories featuring real writers or novels, and this book was right up my street. Swanson is one of my favourite contemporary authors, who acknowledges the history of the thriller genre, but at the same time adding something new to it. I’ve read all of his books – and heartily recommend them – and whilst it’s true that none of them quite reach the excellence of The Kind Worth Killing, the rest are still better than most suspense books being published currently.

There’s an element of meta-fiction to Rules For Perfect Murders, being a mystery novel that was written specifically referencing other mystery novels – and all that comes with that. Swanson has great fun riffing off plot-points made in the aforementioned titles. It’s obvious he has a huge affection for the genre, and what’s great about this novel is how much fun it is to read. The pages just zip by. It’s so accessible. There’s a wonderful pace to the proceedings, and several clever twists along the way, to keep the plot fresh and intriguing. If I had to be critical, there’s one chapter towards the end that feels slightly clunky in its heavy use of exposition; however that is itself is acknowledged by Swanson when he references a similar chapter in another famous mystery novel, so I’d say he 100% manages to pull it off.

If you haven’t read any books by Peter Swanson before, I’d say this one was a great one to start with. He’s one of those writers whom I find myself recommending to anyone who likes reading thrilling, suspenseful, page-turning mysteries. Highly recommended.

The editor Ellen Datlow has long been an indicator that the anthology you are about to read is going to be a good one. She has been editing in the speculative fiction industry for many years. The Cutting Room is a great example of why she is so good at her job.
Not only does this book contain a great array of stories, it’s the way the stories fit together that also complements the overall reading experience. I’m one of those readers who prefer to start at the beginning with an anthology or a collection and work my way through from front to back. I do this because I think there is usually some thought about which stories go in which order and I want to take advantage of the editor’s thought process behind this.
The theme of The Cutting Room is film. It’s a rather tenuous theme, but that’s to the advantage of the book, as it means there’s a variety to the stories that prevents them being too similar. This anthology contains some of my favourite writers – Dennis Etchison, Peter Straub, David Morrell, Gemma Files, Nicholas Royle, Joel Lane, Gary McMahon – so it was not likely to disappoint.
It’s fair to say that there are some great tales included (not all of them horror). This is one I could recommended without a second’s hesitation.

Emma Cline’s The Girls is a fascinating coming of age story set in Los Angeles of the late 1960’s. It details the almost-obsessional relationship between a young girl, Evie, and a group of girls whose paths cross one fateful day.

It’s not a spoiler to say that this novel is a fictitious account surrounding a very real and infamous event – the Charles Manson killings.

Cline’s description of the ranch is artfully done, and Evie’s spiral of descent into darkness is heartbreaking and believable. You can almost feel the LA sun on your face as you read it.

I’ve long-been fascinated by this true crime case – mainly by the overpowering influence that Manson managed to exert upon his followers – so for me the novel worked on both a fictional sense as well as an example of social reportage. Recommended.