GUEST POST: Confessions of my Past, Present and Future #1 - William Meikle

Confessions of my Past, Present and Future

by

William Meikle

The Past

I was a voracious reader as a kid - everything I could get my hands on from DC and Marvel comics, very British ones like "The Hotspur", "The Victor" and "The Valiant", all of the children's classics, and most of our local library's genre section which included everything I could find from Verne, Wells, Rider Haggard, Conan Doyle, Tolkien, Arthur C Clarke and Edgar Rice Burroughs. At the same time I was making my way through my granddad's paperbacks - the "Pan Books of Horror", Dennis Wheatley, Alistair MacLean, Agatha Christie, Louis L'Amour, Len Deighton, Ian Fleming and Ed McBain all figuring large

I found Wyndham, Lovecraft and Moorcock round about 1970 at the age of twelve and things were getting set pretty much for the rest of my lifetime's reading preferences by the time Stephen King and James Herbert came along a few years later.

But there's another constant. My granddad was also a big Bogart fan, and I'd already been introduced to "The Big Sleep" on the telly when I found the paperback in our local shop in '71. I took it home and read it on one sitting, completely lost in Raymond Chandler's California - a far cry from our wee steel working town in the west of Scotland, but somehow Chandler's voice spoke straight to me - laconic hard-edged cynicism with an underlying deep seated romanticism fuelled by snappy one liners. I was hooked.

JOHN CONNOLLY: AN UNEXPECTED INTERVIEW AND REVIEW OF A SONG OF SHADOWS

On April 15^th this year I was lucky enough to grab myself a ticket for an evening with John Connolly, hosted by Waterstones bookstore in my hometown of Newcastle Upon Tyne. This was billed as an event where John would speak for a while and sign copies of his new book A Song of Shadows.

Now – for any fans of John Connolly this type of event would be fantastic to attend. A chance to meet the man behind the legend that is Charlie Parker. Giving that most fans consider Mr Connolly to be a writing legend himself you would half expect some big entourage and fanfare on his arrival. Nope. We were all gathered sitting waiting on the event to start with sweaty palms and expectant glances at the door, watching for a glimpse of the man himself as he arrives with his agent, publisher, hair dresser and chair puller outer, ready to entertain us mere mortals.

REVIEW: Sarah Rayne - Deadlight Hall: A Haunted House Mystery #5

Genre: Mystery / Supernatural

Publisher: Severn House Publishing

Publication Date: 1^st April 2015

Pages: 240

MY REVIEW:

I received an advance copy of Deadlight Hall from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This book is published by Severn House Publishers.

Well now this is a book and a half. I say this because at the beginning I half hated it and half loved it. What transpired in my first venture into the world of Sarah Rayne was confirmation of the old prophecy – “Never give up on a book, because you never know where it may lead and how much pleasure you may end up getting out of it.”

Deadlight Hall is a building that has stood in the Oxfordshire countryside for many years. It has a long history. Much of it hidden and secret. A builder has started to refurbish it and University Professor Leo Rosendale has asked his colleague Dr Michael Flint, an amateur ghost hunter by all accounts, to go to the building and see if he can sense anything. When Flint visits the house, he has a huge sense of foreboding and can hear a voice whispering to him. Professor Rosendale also has a silver “golem” (a Jewish statue) to sell and asks Flint’s partner Nell to look after the sale.

What is the connection with Rosendale, Deadlight Hall, the golem and the ghosts? In this mosaic tale, nothing is ever as it seems. No one is ever as they seem. Everyone has secrets. Even the ghosts.

Now, the most annoyingly infuriating thing about this book? The narrative. When we meet our characters at the beginning, the conversations between Flint, Nell, Rosendale and combinations of all of the above, are written in such a way that they are the most incredibly posh English people you could ever possibly meet. It’s like the entire cast from Downton Abbey in present day. It was mind-bogglingly frustrating.