Ghoster by Jason Arnopp

 

I recently signed with a literary agent for my own writing, and after reading my submission, my agent told me my writing style reminded her of this book. I had heard of this novel and seen the buzz surrounding it but had yet to read it. Seeing as my agent brought it up, I thought I ought to read it.

 

Ghosting, where someone ceases all communication with somebody, stops replying to their messages, perhaps even deletes them or blocks them on social media, and all without any explanation, is a product of the social media age. Kate Collins has been ghosted. She’s met Scott Palmer, seemingly the man of her dreams, and after a whirlwind romance she’s agreed to move in with him. But he ghosts her and right before she’s due to move in. 

 

Kate drives down from Leeds to Brighton anyway but finds his flat completely empty, stripped of all furniture and belongings, the only thing being his phone. When she manages to figure out his password and get access to the phone, she finds all manner of disturbing content and disconcerting messages. Then there are the strange whispering phone calls from numbers and people she doesn’t know. And just what is causing the gouges on the inside of the front door?

 

Ghoster is a supernatural chiller for the modern age. This s a brilliant novel, fantastically plotted and written. Kate is a sympathetic and compelling character, while the supporting cast is strong too. This is the first novel by the author that I’ve read, but it won’t be the last and I’m going to have to dig out his back catalogue. 

 

As said at the outset of this review, I read this title after my literary agent mentioned him. I just hope that I can write as well as him because he’s set a high benchmark!

 

5 out of 5 stars

The Last Resort by Susi Holliday

 

A new luxury retreat operated by Timeo, a mysterious tech company, invites a group of strangers for an all-expenses paid trip to try it out. They’re a disparate bunch, each seemingly selected for a different purpose (a social media influencer, a games designer, etc) and they’ve each been lured by an email that demonstrates the company knows a lot about them and promises them great things, though they’ve been forbidden from telling each other what exactly they’ve been promised.

 

Amelia, the main protagonist, is the odd one out. An aid worker, it’s not clear what she brings to the table. Similarly, when they’re all fitted with devices attached to their skulls which tap into their brainwaves, hers won’t work and she has to wear a less effective bio-sensor that’s worn around the wrist like a watch.

 

The head attched devices are the cause of trouble, for they soon start projecting the wearer’s deepest secrets for all the group to see. It soon transpires that each member of the party has a shameful past and the disgusted reaction each feels towards the others sows division. Amelia also falls under suspicion, for how come she got out of wearing one?

 

There are a number of books coming to market at the moment where a group of friends or strangers find themselves marooned or isolated somewhere and discover they have secrets. Susi Holliday’s novel is part of this trend, though it has a unique spin, being a genre crossover between speculative sci-fi and crime. The Last Resort is a kind of Black Mirror-esque tale where the implications of real-world tech that is in development (bio-sensors and efforts to read brainwaves are being worked on) is imagined and given a dystopian treatment. 

 

Holliday has written a really good thriller here that’s very readable and a real page-turner. It’s well plotted and despite their pasts and the things they’ve done, I found the characters relatable, the author making even those that had done the most appalling things all too human. 

 

5 out of 5 stars

The House of a Hundred Whispers by Graham Masterton

I’m not a massive horror reader, preferring the crime and thriller genre, but I dip my reading toe in every now and again. Graham Masterton is a prolific author whose name I’ve seen a lot, he’s written a lot of books, but who I’ve never read. I decided to give this one a go, quite on a whim, and I have to say I’ve not been disappointed.

 

Allhallows Hall, a rambling Tudor mansion on the edge of Dartmoor, is owned by Herbert Russell, the retired governor of Dartmoor Prison. After he’s murdered, his estranged children and their partners return for the will reading. They soon learn that the house has been left in trust to young Timmy, Herbert Russell’s grandson (and the son of his least favourite son), and the only child present. This obviously causes friction with Herbert’s other children. 

 

When Timmy goes missing this is just the first in a long line of events that soon reveals the house not to be what they thought, and that Herbert’s death was not a simple murder. Strange whisperings, the characters pushed and shoved by invisible people is just the start, soon other’s in their party go missing, and even people trying to assist them.

 

A House of a Hundred Whispers is not a gory or violent novel, well apart from two very gory scenes towards the end, which are also incredibly imaginative in how the victims meet their ends. From what I understand, Masterton can do blood and gore with the best of them (as he demonstrates with the two examples mentioned), but this is much more a supernatural chiller than a gore-fest. I wouldn’t even say it’s particularly frightening. But that shouldn’t put readers off, because it’s a supernatural tale well told which compels you to turn the pages and handles it’s competing elements well. And there’s a lot of elements here: ghosts, witches, demons, spells and lots of local folklore.

 

4 out of 5 stars

Voodoo Heart by John Everson

 

All across New Orleans, on one night each month, people are being snatched from their beds, their hearts left on their bloody sheets. Their family and loved ones are at a loss to explain how it happened right under their noses; even partners sleeping next to the victims aren’t woken when the victims are stolen away into the night.  Detective Lawrence Ribaud’s wife is one such victim and this makes the investigation very personal to him.

 

It soon transpires that the disappearances are occurring on the night of the full moon and that voodoo, or at least a belief in voodoo, is in play. Ribaud is a cynic and doesn’t believe in the power of voodoo, but many of the people he interacts with do and as the investigation unfolds, he finds his scepticism challenged.

 

Voodoo Heart is an excellent book. It has a great sense of place and while I’ve never been to New Orleans myself, the author appears to know the city well; I really enjoyed how he took us behind the touristy kitsch that most visitors will only see. It is also full of a creepy atmosphere and is not for the feint hearted. Ribaud comes across some horrific things in this novel and there’s a lot of blood and guts.

 

If I have one criticism of Voodoo Heart, it’s that Ribaud’s police colleagues never mention his wife. This is a man whose wife is a victim of these horrific crimes, yet none of his colleagues, nor his boss, ask once about his wellbeing. No one asks how he’s holding up. And would he even be allowed to work the case, seeing as he’s so personally invested and thus maybe not thinking straight? Again, this is never addressed.

 

That said, this is a really good slice of Southern Gothic horror and is well worth a read.

4 out of 5 stars

Attack Surface by Cory Doctorow

 

Masha Maximow is a hacker in the employ of Xoth Intelligence, an InfoSec company that sells its services to the highest bidder. The novel opens with her posted to the fictional country of "Slovstakia" (which could be any number ex-soviet republics, perhaps one of the Stans in Central Asia, or an Eastern European or Baltic nation) where she helps its corrupt government with surveillance tech to crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. She has a conscience though and has befriended some of the protestors on the side to try and help them, but her efforts are no match for Zoth and the day job. 

After her employers discover her moonlighting and she’s fired, she returns to the United States where she rejoins childhood friends who are protesting against oppressive policing in California. Here a previous employer, Zyz, forces her to work for them to suppress the protestors. Through chapters that flashback we learn how Maximow was first employed by Zyz to work in Iraq using her hacking and surveillance tech against insurgents. She was then recruited by Zoth. We learn too, of all the compromises that she has made down the years. 

This is the third book in a loose trilogy (though it stands alone, and you don’t have to have read the previous titles to read this), each focusing on tech and oppression, and on the protestors who try to fight it. It’s marketed as science fiction/speculative fiction, but it’s very much near-sci-fi; in fact, I think the genre is misleading, much of what’s included in the book is already current as any reading of the Snowden revelations would reveal. 

This is a book that is very heavy on the technical detail, however, and the author is keen to show exactly how realistic the events he depicts are. Unfortunately, I thought this dense knowledge was too much and the book often got bogged down under the weight of it. The book felt far too long as well, the author cramming much too much in one title. 

That all said, I was never tempted to stop reading and this is a compelling story with an interesting character arc. The reader never look at their phone in the same light, either. We all know that smartphones can be used to track us, and Attack Surface really brings this home. It also proves the lie to those who say “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear,” and those who believe that the loss of privacy that social media has ushered in is no big thing.

3 out of 5 stars

Stone Cold Trouble by Amer Anwar

 

This is the long-awaited sequel to the author’s debut Brothers in Blood, an impressive novel that made a well-deserved impact on the crime fiction landscape. We’re back with Zaq and his best mate Jags in Southall, and once more this is a tale populated by the West London neighbourhood's less respectable inhabitants.

Stone Cold Trouble starts off with Zaq still in the employ of the timber yard owned by the Brar family, this despite the fact that in the previous novel he went toe-to-toe with the Brar sons, both local thugs. Zaq outwitted them and they now languish as guests of Her Majesty’s Pleasure, but luckily for him, their father is blissfully unaware of his role in his sons’ incarceration, and so he still has a job.

Trouble for Zaq this time occurs on two fronts. First, his brother Tariq is beaten into a coma, and second Jags uncle loses a valuable necklace in a game of poker. Zaq investigates who beat up Tariq fearing it’s any number of people he crossed in book one, while he and Jags try and recover the necklace. Needless to say, it isn’t long before they end up in all kinds of trouble. As mentioned, and being a crime thriller, the two friends soon cross a new selection of unsavoury characters and some of the bad guys in Stone Cold Trouble are truly unpleasant people who consider themselves above the law. 

Stone Cold Trouble is a great novel, albeit a little slower to get going than Brothers in Blood. This reflects the storyline well though as Zaq is both worried about his brother and also has very little to go on in his investigations. The climactic last third is really very tense and by then the reader has discovered just how repellent those our heroes are up against really are.

As with the first book, this is a well-plotted crime novel with compelling characterisation, and as with book one, there are a number of hints of where things might go next. As the series progresses Zaq and Jags are building up both enemies (such as the Brar Brothers, who currently rot in the clink) and others who might become suspicious that the two could be a liability (a certain person in Stone Cold Trouble). Either could form a plotline for book three. Or the two might happen across a whole new set of villains. Either way, this is a series that is well worth a read and Stone Cold Trouble is a great sequel to the author’s debut.

5 out of 5 stars

Enemy of the Raj by Alec Marsh

 

Drabble and Harris are back in this, the second of Alec Marsh’s novels to feature the indomitable duo, and a sequel to his debut, Rule Britannia. It’s 1937 and our pair, Sir Percival Harris and Professor Ernest Drabble, are in India. The novel opens with the two on a tiger hunt, which is quite an opening for a story.

Rule Britannia was set against the backdrop of fascism in Britain in the 1930s and those who admired and wished to collaborate with Hitler. There was an element of speculative/counterfactual history to the plot, in that it imagined an attempted coup d’etat by fascist forces. In keeping with this flavour, Enemy of the Raj does something similar; set against the backdrop of the burgeoning independence movement in India, it isn’t long before our heroes find themselves embroiled in plots and conspiracies as needless to say, not everyone is happy with the idea of India freeing itself from the yolk of British rule.

Like the first novel in the series, Enemy of the Raj is well-plotted and the characterisation is strong, the two main characters a great contrast to each other. Drabble is intelligent and capable, he’s the action hero of the piece, while Harris is more than a little hapless.

As with the previous novel, the author has clearly done his research. This novel examines the history of India leading up to independence, and while this is not a heavy or political read, it is educational. Where Rule Britannia focused on the little known story of Cromwell’s head and what has happened to it down the years, Enemy of the Raj tells the remarkable story of Maharaja Ganga Singh, a man who the author rightly calls one of the lost giants of the twentieth century. This is a man who achieved much and led a really quite astonishing life and yet has been all but forgotten from history. His story is weaved through the plot of Enemy of the Raj to entertaining effect; hopefully, it will go some way to bringing Singh the recognition he deserves.

Enemy of the Raj is an entertaining novel and a worthy sequel to Drabble and Harris’s previous outing. I particularly like the author’s use of little known elements of history to illuminate the period and his use of speculative/counterfactual plot lines. I hope that he can think of something to equally good for the third in the series (I’m sure there’ll be a third outing for our part of unlikely heroes) and look forward to reading what they get up to next.

5 out of 5 stars