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Posted: 05-08-2013 12:35 Post subject:

Can't see it mentioned anywhere, but Peter Cushing fans might want to check out Stephen (Ghostwatch) Volk's Whitstable:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Whitstable-Stephen-Volk/dp/0957392729

It mixes fact with fiction, using a real person in a made-up situation.Worth checking out, a nice quick read.

Here's the blurb from Amazon

"1971. A middle-aged man, wracked with grief, walks along the beach at Whitstable in Kent... A boy approaches him and, taking him for the famous vampire-hunter Doctor Van Helsing from the Hammer movies, asks for his help. Because he believes his stepfather really is a vampire...So begins the moving and evocative new novella by Stephen Volk, published by the British Fantasy Award-nominated Spectral Press in May 2013 to coincide with the centenary of the most celebrated and beloved of Hammer's stars, Peter Cushing."

Posted: 12-08-2013 13:37 Post subject:

Free today -- Shadows from Norwood, seven new lovecraftian stories, as mentioned in Fortean Times --

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shadows-From-Norwood-Necronomicon-ebook/dp/B00DWYGQHM/ref=sr_1_1

Posted: 25-08-2013 20:15 Post subject:

Hell House by Richard Matheson. You can draw a straight line between Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House through this and onto the 1970s paperback blockbusters of Stephen King, James Herbert and their fellows.

It starts out as a genteel, if ominous, attempt to get rid of the haunted house's spirits through scientific means and ends up as totally outrageous, lurid horror as only this decade could do, in print anyway.

Worth a look if you have the stomach for it, I read it in tribute to the late, great Matheson and wasn't sorry. They made a good film from it too, though I see how much they toned it down in translation to the movies. Worrying rumours are that Michael Bay wants to remake it!

Posted: 02-09-2013 23:47 Post subject:

I've just found a number of copies of OMNI magazine that are downloadable as PDF's from Archive.org.

I'm downloading them to read on my Nexus 7 while on holiday from next Monday.

The link to them is:

http://archive.org/details/omni-magazine

Posted: 12-09-2013 12:31 Post subject:

Posted: 12-09-2013 12:44 Post subject:

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes, serial killer time travel, vgood. The Iron Jackal by Chris Wooding, probably the best of the Ketty Jay series, steampunk.

Reading Doomsday Men by P.D. Smith.

Posted: 12-09-2013 19:00 Post subject:

Don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I finally got my hands on the third book in the Corfu Trilogy by Gerald Durrell.

The whole series is a fantastic read, funny, and full of insight into the natural world as only a ten-year-old boy can see it.

I highly recommend My Family and Other Animals, Birds, Beasts, and Relatives, and Fauna and Family (previously titled, "The Garden of the Gods").

Posted: 20-09-2013 19:43 Post subject:

Offbeat, edited by Julian Upton. If you like old movies and are looking for something British from about 1955-1985, and are tired of Zulu, Carry on Cleo, The Railway Children, The Long Good Friday and all those which always show up on bank holidays, then here's a guide to a select few which you will probably find very interesting, with plenty of reasons why, in review and essay form.

Our glorious leader Dr Sutton is one of the contributors and it's a very entertaining read (if something's rubbish, they'll point it out), packed with memory joggers if you've spent too much time watching British TV on Sunday afternoons or late at night. Plenty of weirdness which seems even weirder now. Only thing that irritated was a slight tendency for the "makes Get Carter look like Wombling Free" school of criticism, only not as a joke, but that's a quibble. It would be great to read a sequel.

Posted: 20-09-2013 22:51 Post subject:

I got this last weekend! Very Happy

Posted: 22-09-2013 19:49 Post subject:

Great, just ignore the mysterious grudge against Quadrophenia the editor has and you'll really enjoy it.

Posted: 06-10-2013 08:43 Post subject:

Thomas Quick: The Making of a Serial Killer, by Hannes Råstam.

For those who don't know, Thomas Quick/Sture Bergwall was Sweden's most prolific serial killer, having been convicted of eight of the over thirty murders he confessed to - until he changed his mind.

The incidences of what amounts to wilful stupidity and professional dishonesty on the part of certain key authority figures involved in the case are far too numerous to list; in fact they're so common that I found myself thinking that if the book had been a work of fiction I'd have been in serious danger of getting bored with that particular element. However, this is not your run of the mill fit-up; Bergwall collaborated with rabid enthusiasm in the whole process - so much so that, although one of the criticisms of the case is that during the trials the adversarial process effectively disappeared, it's sometimes hard to see what else the defence teams could have done, Bergwalls confessions (and it was all about confessions - there being no forensic evidence at all to tie him to any of the killings) being so adamantly and enthusiastically delivered.

The way in which Bergwall was handed the information he needed to prove his involvement in the various killings is sometimes so unabashed that you wonder how on earth it never really got questioned - at times you get the impression that people around the investigation stood with their mouths open thinking 'no...no...that really did not just happen...can't have', and then walked away shaking their heads at the way the mind can play tricks. Alarm bells did ring, but no-one paid much attention - at least to start with - so enthralled were most people by the serial killer roadshow.

It really doesn't take the contribution of the outside experts Råstam interviews to know that when questioning a subject you don't provide essential information couched within the questions you ask them; you do not set up the scene of a complex re-enactment precisely as it really was (and even redirect the subject when he still manages to get things wrong); when an interrogatee provides the wrong information on a particular point, you do not continually return to that specific point in such a manner that the subject is prompted to realise that there is a discrepancy and consequently change their story.

At one point it is discovered that a vitally important physical element in one of those precisely designed re-enactments was wrong - however, this is only found out after the fact, and after Bergwall has been prompted, in the ways described above, to weave it into the narrative of his 're-enacment' of the killing. It's a clear lie, because it couldn't possibly be true - the anomaly was spotted, but effectively ignored by those in charge

The implication that Bergwall was a victim of the whole serial killer roadshow is hard to avoid entirely - but I also found it hard to stomach. He traded false information for increased medication, generally, it seems, of his own choosing - and clearly basked in the importance the confessions bestowed on him. (It's not an exaggeration to describe his behaviour at times as akin to that of some histrionic prima donna-ish celebrity). Admittedly, victimhood becomes a very fluid element when addiction is a main ingredient of the basic mix - but Bergwall also implicated completely innocent people in his crimes and entirely - and probably irrevocably - sidetracked the investigations into over thirty murders. These, as far as I know, remain unsolved - which is probably the most disturbing thing about the whole sorry story.

All in all really quite bizarre and disturbing - and definitely worth a read.

Posted: 14-10-2013 18:13 Post subject:

For anyone interested in the case the above book is based on there's an interesting article in The Guardian from 2012: