Charles Jessold begins with a newspaper clipping concerning a triple tragedy: a double murder and a suicide. On 23 June 1923 police had arrived at the home of composer Charles Jessold and his family after receiving reports of a shot having been fired. Upon entering the house, the body of Jessold was discovered. He was dead from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. On a bed near where Jessold’s body was found were the bodies of Jessold’s wife, mezzo soprano Victoria London, and Edward Manville, an acquaintance of the couple. The two had died from arsenic poison, the poison seemingly having been administered by Jessold before he took his own life. Jessold and London’s baby son was found alive in his crib. Jessold’s debut opera, Little Musgrave, had been due to be given its premiere by the English Opera Company on 25 June.

The story is then taken up by Leslie Shepherd, a noted theatre critic, friend and sometime collaborator of Jessold. An aging Shepherd has produced two accounts of the tragic demise of operatic enfant terrible Jessold: the first a fleshed-out portrait of Charles Jessold that Shepherd submitted to the police in the days after the tragedy to help them understand the composer’s character better, while the second was written years later when Shepherd had been appointed as Jessold’s official biographer and serves to reshuffle and re-evaluate the truth behind the tragedy. Shepherd is uniquely placed to tell this tale, having been in the company of Jessold on the night of his suicide and also having an expert knowledge of the life and crimes of Carlo Gesualdo, a medieval Italian composer who murdered his wife in circumstances similar to Jessold’s own crime. Shepherd was one of the first in the opera establishment to take notice of Jessold’s talents and, even though Jessold’s brilliance declined rapidly following his imprisonment in Germany during the First World War and his subsequent alcoholism, never gives up hope that his protégé will one day be recognised as the saviour of British music.

Charles Jessold Considered as a Murderer is every bit as unusual, imaginative and witty as Wesley Stace’s previous two novels. The story behind the deaths manages to be both exciting and tragic while the subplots involving the development of British music in the early 20^th century as well as the horror of the First World War and the spread of nationalism across both the country and the opera establishment more than hold their own. There is a great deal to be interested in in this novel and so the story can be truly said to entertain and to inform.

The characterisation in Charles Jessold is generally excellent. Both Jessold and Shepherd have complex personalities and are given to only sharing one aspect of themselves with any given group of friends or acquaintances, and so getting to understand their true nature takes quite a long while. The growth of their relationship, the truth behind it and the way it changes over time, is fascinating to behold and, although the reader knows from the outset of the tragedy that will eventually occur, the sense of melancholy that haunts the pages of the novel as their friendship begins to unravel is both compelling and unnerving. Stace has managed to weave together wholly original characters and those based, at least in part, on real people in a very organic, convincing fashion. The only character who could perhaps have done with more development is Shepherd’s wife Miriam. She plays an important role in the novel but is somewhat pushed to the forefront suddenly and without adequate build-up. Still, as a whole, the cast of the novel are excellent.

The attention that Wesley Stace has paid to the minute details of operatic history, the personalities that he captures and occasionally lampoons, as well as the recreations and reminiscences of the music itself are truly amazing, and just as impressive as the novel’s imaginative plot and ingenious original characters. Although Stace is a musician himself (he has released around twenty albums under his stage name of John Wesley Harding), his own genre is folk/pop and so he must have had to do considerable digging to display this level of operatic expertise. All of his novels so far have been historical and Stace certainly has a knack for recreating period detail and an ear for authentic dialogue.

Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer is a thoroughly entertaining novel; intelligent and fun, it never hits a bum note.

In the early ‘80’s, after a painful divorce and redundancy from his job as a Professor, Least Heat-Moon buys a van, decks it with a bed, table, cooker and toilet so it is liveable and in accordance with Native American resurrection rituals, calls it Ghost Dancing.

He then drives for 13,000 miles on the ‘Blue Highways’ of America, the small back water roads (coloured blue on the old Rand McNally maps) that take him through forgotten and lost towns; he purposely steers clear from the fast motorways and big cities. He retells the histories of the areas he passes through, talks to the people he meets along the way – be it a born again Christian who hitchhikes for no other purpose than to spread the word of God, a family who have a book recording every death in the community for several generations and take solace in the fact that one day their names will also be added to the book – to Brenda, the waitress he meets in a roadside diner, with whose dialogue (as with everybody he meets) he recreates on the page, and it’s beautiful to read.

Blue Highways is wistful, witty, heart warming and painful. The knowledge that many of these people knew that they were the last of their kind before they were swallowed up by faceless consumerism that lurked at the edges of their communities is extremely sad and touching.

The book inspired me so much, that I took my own road trip, at 19, all around the UK. I spent one year on the road, just me with a tent and a rucksack and I hitchhiked and found work in whatever town I landed in and met many amazing people, some who I’m still in touch with 15 years later. And the book went with me every step of the way, and it holds pride of place on my best bookshelf, battered and dog-eared, next to the signed Pan Horrors and the Not at Nights…”

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About Johnny Mains:

Johnny Mains is a relative newcomer to the genre. He has had a couple of short stories published in the Black Book of Horror series, has written for SFX and interviews cult authors and artists for  The Paperback Fanatic Magazine.

He has just edited Back From the Dead: The Legacy of the Pan Book of Horror Stories and has written the introduction for the re-issue of the 1959 Pan Book of Horror Stories, out in October.

He lives in Norwich with his wife Lou and dog, Biscuit.

• Visit Johnny’s website
• Read an interview with Johnny

In the first volume, The Dreaming Void, the scene was set – a void at the centre of the galaxy threatens to consume the galaxy if it expands, which it does whenever spacefarers try to enter it – and the reason they would try to enter it is because they know, via the medium of shared dreams that come from inside the Void, that humans can enjoy incredible psychic powers like telepathy and telekinesis once inside. A massive religion, Living Dream, has sprung up to worship Edeard, the Waterwalker, an exceptionally powerful psychic who dwells within the Void. Living Dream want to get in, whatever the cost, while some Human factions, and other alien races, are determined to keep them out. This being Hamilton, it is of course vastly more complex than that, and having allowed considerable time to go by between the first and second books, it took me a while to get back in to the swing – leaving no gap between the second and third tomes was the right thing to do, for sure , as they flow almost seamlessly in to one another.

There is a great deal to enjoy and admire in the Void Trilogy: taut plotting, breathtaking technological conceits, impressive characterisation (Gore Burnelli being a particular favourite of mine); most of all, though, is the fantasy-like writing of the Edeard episodes, as dreamed by the prophet Inigo. Shorn of the trappings of SF, they prove that Hamilton has no need of spaceships and aliens to write a compelling story – in Edeard’s tale, he explores to the full the potential, and the sometimes awful cost, of Edeard’s growing powers, and the frequent moral dilemmas they impose upon their user. He also creates an intriguing world in which nothing technological can function, and the power of the mind, combined with genetic engineering, serves as a motor for society. These episodes are some of the best aspects of these books, and the SF sections become more enjoyable because of the relief that Edeard brings.

Problems? Well, if you don’t allow yourself think about the fact that the narrative doesn’t seem to be affected at all by the pesky business of relativity, despite taking place across numerous locations in the galaxy, then not really. Hamilton has never claimed to write hard SF, and knows that trying to please Einstein is not a recipe for success – he just invents really fast spaceships, and cracks on with the story. And what a story…

No fan of space opera can afford not to have the Void Trilogy in their lives – these books really are that good.

Tongues of Serpents

With Tongues of Serpents, Novik goes Down Under, continuing the story of the dragon Temeraire and his captain Lawrence after their deportation to Australia. Given the fact that their previous adventures have been set amidst war, political manoeuvring and Empire-building across three continents, it is unsurprising that a story set in the backwater of a British prisoner colony should be immediately less exciting. To some degree the lack of immediate action helps the atmosphere of the book and the reader can easily gain a sense of what it must have been like to be deported, without promise of pardon, to rot at the far ends of the earth. Novik’s descriptions of the wild and alien landscape, painted in strange colours and populated by malicious demons further foster a sense of the alienation felt among the Western settlers and even their unconventional dragons. Novik also continues to explore some of the moral issues that she has examined in previous books and it’s interesting to see how she compares different world views through the eyes of both Lawrence, the upright 19^th Century naval captain whose entire upbringing has been formed around the ideal of Duty and British supremacy, and Temeraire, the Chinese dragon whose views are formed solely by experience rather than indoctrination.

Despite all this, however, there is definitely the sense that this book is primarily a place-holder in the series, setting up the story for the protagonists’ next big challenge. Tongues of Serpents is certainly well-written and it’s interesting (particularly for Australian readers) to see what’s happening in this part of the world. However I couldn’t help feeling that Novik has placed her story here largely so she can tick Australia off her travel list and take a breather before plunging back into the fray. Napoleon is still bent on world domination, old protagonists are stirring once again, and it is inevitable that Temeraire and Lawrence will once again be called back into the maelstrom of what is rapidly shaping up to be the First World War. Against the previous titles in the series Tongues of Serpents is by far the least engaging. However with three more titles projected in the series, this instalment avoids disappointing – and ultimately does its job admirably of whetting readers’ appetites for the next Temeraire adventure.

Shade follows Aura, a girl who was born at the exact moment of the Shift, when ghosts became something that everyone born after the Shift could see, and life changed forever. Aura works with her aunt to help ghosts get the justice they require to move on. Ghosts can only speak to those born after the Shift, so the children and teenagers feel the brunt of the demands for justice and peace. Without this sort of help, the ghosts can become shades, powerful spirits with abilities that frighten the living. The tendency of ghosts to turn dark and become shades if they don’t get justice complicates the matter, as those shades become more and more out of control and bent on revenge.

But Shade, for all of it’s focus on the ghosts and the Shift, is really a book about a girl. Aura, for all that she can see ghosts, leads a faintly normal life: boyfriend, school, future plans. All of this normality, all of Aura’s dreams and hopes, come to a crashing halt the night her boyfriend dies. He appears to her soon after, and Aura’s first impulse is to cling to him, and her past life, as tightly as she can, refusing to let go of the dreams she’s carried for so long. But clinging onto Logan doesn’t keep her dreams alive, and the choices that Aura will have to make change her life forever.

The world that Smith-Ready creates is fascinating. Instead of having the ability to see ghosts be something that sets her heroine apart, it is something that most of those around her also experience. The difference here is that Aura is seeking to understand why everything happened instead of just reacting to what is happening. Aura is more than just an investigator, though, and the heart of her story is her life, her school, her friends, and a new boy named Zachary. Because the background feels so solid, the fact that a number of questions are left for the books that will follow just makes the story feel broader and more fascinating.

The writing in Shade is another of the high points of the novel. Whether it’s a quiet moment with Aura and her thoughts, or a louder, wilder, party scene, it always feels fresh and real. And, sometimes, it resonates beyond what is going on on the page itself.

Some of these stars are already dead. In the thousands of years it takes their light to reach us, they could’ve exploded or burned out…
We sat for a few more minutes in silence, and I began to understand why Eowyn was making us do this exercise. Three thousand years ago, people probably couldn’t imagine the birth and death of stars. Those points of light were constant, dependable, eternal. Must have been comforting.
We packed up my car and drove home, under a sky full of ghosts.

Alison is surrounded by spirits. But these are not the polite, eager to please and communicative spirits the Victorians would have us expect. They consistently disrupt her interaction with the ‘real’ world, invisibly interrupting conversations and plans, finding ways to make her follow the path they would choose for her, and, as most people cannot see them, she feels she must protect the world from the realities of ‘Spirit’. They make her ill as she relives their shocking ends and disgusting deeds. Even Diana appears to her with smudged mascara and confusion. Alison’s own spirit guide, Morris, is remorselessly sordid and attracts more spirits of the same kind. Many of these spirits are conjured from Alison’s past, old ‘friends’ of her infamous mother. They invoke often shockingly dark memories from her childhood which she must piece together to give her a chance of release. But who is her father? Her mother certainly doesn’t seem to know or care. And how did MacArthur lose his eye, or Keef his balls? Where did she get the scars on the backs of her thighs?

Mantel mixes a dark and difficult past with a present filled with solitude and hope. Alison and her assistant/manager, Collette, seem to embody the two extremes of female loneliness, the fatty protections of the compulsive eater and the cold hardness of the divorcee, both shunning the right kind of male company in their own ways and attracting all the wrong sorts.

Mantel is a master of description and the motorway corridors and housing estates of the world she creates for us are spaciously and gloriously delivered to us. The unexpected slant on the life of a medium is filled with delightful (and horrible) detail. Beyond Black is a book that you will look forward to returning to each time you have to put it down.

Of the eight stories in this, his first collection, I would count six as absolutely first rate, and rank the remaining two alongside the best work of other Edwardian supernaturalists. Five of them, and a later story – A Warning to the Curious – form what I now call the M R James Trilogy, a set of one man shows in which I take on the role of the author telling spook tales in his Cambridge study, circa 1904.

Most people who love M R James – and I’ve only ever met those who love him or have never read him; I have yet to meet a full blooded James hater – most people who love him seem to have got hooked during adolescence. But they’re a pleasure that endure into adulthood and – for the purposes of this, anyway – beyond.

They grow on you. Of the stories I perform, The Mezzotint, The Ash Tree and Lost Hearts have increased in stature in my eyes over the years while Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook, Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to you, my Lad, and A Warning to the Curious have retained their status as firm favourites.

I started doing MRJ shows five years ago, when I worked at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and got the chance to perform in his old office – the Founder’s Library, a magnificent Victorian book-lined interior with a huge marble fireplace, where he catalogued so many of the medieval manuscripts in Cambridge collections. I think I’ve probably performed Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook over two hundred times since then and I’ve really not got sick of it. The gradual build up of tension, the accumulation of detail, the spectacular, climactic apparition, and that slow, rather melancholy coda – they affect me now as they affected me a quarter of a century ago.

Perhaps, in fact,  after so many repetitions the stories aren’t quite as chilling as they were on first reading. One might think that’s a failure in a ghost story but I don’t. For me the shudders – and they are undoubtedly there – have always been only part of the pleasure that MRJ delivers. There’s a humour in the stories, a playfulness, and that distinct narratorial voice – sometimes diffident, always friendly – that make them perfect holiday reading. Particularly if that holiday is taken alone. In winter. By the sea. And one reaches it by train. I think I’ve always found something strangely comforting about M R James.

They were composed for the holidays in the first place. James wrote all except one of the stories in Ghost Stories of an Antiquary to read aloud to friends at Kings College at Christmas (the last, The Treasure of Abbot Thomas is for me the least satisfying of the collection and was written at the publisher’s request to fill up the volume). So they are party pieces, really, candlelit, donnish entertainments, to be enjoyed with wine and anchovy toast after chapel on Christmas Eve. James’s protagonists are often solitary men, even lonely men, and this often leaves them vulnerable to inexplicable phenomena, but he’s not out to describe or inspire any existential agony. He doesn’t show us a cruel, random universe. His is a world of cathedral precincts and pipesmoke-filled hotel sitting-rooms, into which the monsters and grotesques that lurk in the margins of his beloved medieval manuscripts sometimes intrude. If James has a world view it is, as he admits himself, a very simple one – that there is more in heaven and earth, Horatio…  And that golf is an inexplicable waste of time.

I also love James McBryde’s illustrations in the book. Poor, genial, doomed, talented James McBryde, MRJ’s beloved friend. A reluctant medic, he had in 1904 at last embarked upon a career as an artist. The illustration of Ghost Stories of an Antiquary was his first professional job and he went at it with gusto. A framed print of McBryde’s version of the climax of Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to you my Lad, hangs above the desk where I’m writing this.

A quick recap: Parkins, the Professor of Ontography at Cambridge University, is enjoying a golfing holiday on the Suffolk coast. He finds an ancient whistle by the beach, blows it and inadvertantly summons a… well it’s hard to say what exactly… but something responds to the whistle and attacks him in his room in the middle of the night, something wrapped in bedsheets.

The story makes the being’s “intensely horrible face of crumpled linen” the focal point of the terror. James McBryde pays more attention to the grimace of its victim: in the picture Parkins is skeletal, his mouth a lunatic rictus, his cheeks hollowed out by a scream. The story has him lurching out of the window to escape his attacker; McBryde hems him in against a chest of drawers, his claw-like hands reaching out to fend off a being that he is too terrified to touch. Like the best book illustrations, it not only complements MRJ’s prose, it adds to the enjoyment of it.

The young artist himself sensed that he had created something special. On the 6th May 1904 he wrote to MRJ. “I have finished the Whistle ghost… I covered yards of paper to put in the moon shadows correctly and it is certainly the best thing I have ever drawn…”

It was probably also the last piece he completed. By the 4th of June he was dead, from a botched operation to remove his appendix. It was partly as a tribute to his great friend that James published Ghost Stories… in the first place.

I’ve also grown to love the look and feel of that first edition – the weight of it, the thick pages, the brown, hessian-like binding, the Gothic script on the cover. I’ve seen and handled a few copies over the last few years and still scour charity shops and jumble sales just in case one of those mythical copies turns up, going for 50p because the vendor doesn’t know what he’s selling.

And finally I like the idea of some Dennistoun or Parkins of the future digging up my funerary copy and becoming increasingly uneasy as he reads about what can happen when you pilfer the treasure of the past. So uneasy in fact that, by the time he has reached the end of the book, he decides it might be best to return the modest looking volume to the bony grasp of the skeleton from whose grave he snatched it. Yes, that would be the sensible thing to do.”

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About Robert Lloyd Parry:

Since December 2005 Robert has been performing two one man shows based on the stories of M R James, the greatest writer of supernatural tales in English. His uncanny resemblance to the author has been noted with a shudder by more than one enthusiastic audience member.

• Visit the Nunkie Theatre Company’s website

I haven’t finished Heartstone yet. Truth be told I’m only just halfway through, but I know there are people who will want to know. I dare say there are a few like me who simply need to know. Right now, darn it.

Well, for all of these people, relax, I’m here to tell you it’s all going to be fine, the wait is over and Heartstone is great. Really great. So plump up the cushions, get your favourite chair ready  - you’re going to need it. It’s been a year of half decent historical fiction, but Heartstone marks the return of a master storyteller.

Full review to follow.

It did occur to me that to properly review Greendale I should track down the album, listen to it on headphones while completing the interactive tour on my laptop with the live action film on mute on the telly in the background. All that seemed quite a task simply for preparation for reading a comic book so I decided not to give the album even a cursory listen. Instead I dived right into the comic book without any in-depth knowledge of Young’s project apart from an inkling that it would contain tree hugging and maybe a mild rant against George Bush. I expect the creators of this graphic novel wanted it to be consumed without the need for backstory and that it should work as a stand alone piece. So that is how I approached it.

The story concerns a teenage girl called Sun who lives in the small southern US town of Greendale. Sun is part of a linage of women who all have special powers over nature – the narrative tracks the awakening of these powers in Sun and also how her political beliefs mature over time – she defeats a demon with her newly realized powers and ends up hitching to Alaska to protest about oil drilling and the war in Iraq. Along the way she finds out about her magical heritage and her ancestry. The demon Sun defeats bears a strong resemblance to Neil Young and after noticing this I ended up thinking that most of the male characters looked a bit like Neil Young, but that could be my mind playing tricks. The demon also reminded me a little of the preacher in Poltergeist 2, in the way he is initially seen by Sun from a distance walking through walls, and how the demon is only visible to certain people. In Suns dreams the demon becomes a giant goat-like creature and these dream passages are the most enjoyable, as it seems like Chiang lets his imagination loose and the panels seem more free and full of energy.

The overall book design is well executed, my copy is a hardback with a rough matt finish without a dust jacket. The family tree pages have a retro ‘vintage’ feel to the layout and typography. I presume that these design decisions were to give the book an ageless quality and this concept seems to extend to the art – the colour is quite desaturated in that 1950s style but Chiang’s art is very fresh and clean and for me didn’t quite carry over the vintage concept.

I always like to see the artist’s ‘hand’ in comic books, which might seem paradoxical, but there is a current style for comic art to look quite perfect – lines are beautifully rendered, colours have smooth gradients and there is the feel and influence of the computer to the work. I have always preferred to see the sketches behind the drawing, or a much more loose style of drawing in the style of Eddie Campbell, Ted McKeever or Vincent Paronnaud for example – but this is only my personal preference and there are some lovingly rendered panels in Greendale, particularly the dream sequences – you can see the artist’s hand at work in these panels, which for me are the most successful.

While I was looking at the various incarnations of the Greendale project I was particularly taken with the album cover art for Greendale, a beautiful illustration in a very ‘folk’ style by American artist James Mazzeo. I have not gone completely off topic – the illustration appears in the inside cover of the comic book. Anyone interested in contemporary American folk art should check him out.

Greendale the graphic novel seems to be intended for a teenage audience, and the ‘coming of age’ sub plot combined with the ecological pro-active message fits that audience perfectly. Buy this comic book if you are young enough to have never heard of Neil Young.

And so begins the groundbreaking international bestseller, The Slap, by Christos Tsiolkas. What begins as a normal, laid-back get-together between friends turns into a confrontation that will dramatically alter their lives and affect every person who is there to bear witness. Because The Slap is so much more than it first appears. What seems like a simple focus on what is acceptable in today’s society when it comes to other people’s children turns into an in-depth exploration of what life is like in modern day Australia when race, religion, culture, gender, and sexuality comes into play.

Some of the most interesting dynamics in the story are those between Harry, the perpetrator, and Gary and Rosie, the parents of the slapped child. While Gary and Rosie bounce between feeling a mixture of upset and fury, the only remorse that Harry seems to feel is for the backlash he’s caused. Furthermore, it’s interesting that most of the characters don’t seem to fall into the expected route and rush to defend Gary and Rosie. While the majority of them remain silent and diplomatic, while dipping into their thoughts we can see that a part of them agrees with what Harry did.

When we look at the backgrounds and identities of Harry, Gary, and Rosie, we can’t help but notice that this isn’t down to chance. While Harry comes from a well-respected, rich family living in a big house, Gary and Rosie live on the poorer side of town and are privately scorned and mocked about Gary’s drinking habit and Rosie’s ‘mother earth’ approach to parenting, allowing her son to throw public tantrums and get away with whatever he wants. The barbeque is an environment filled with Harry’s ‘kind of people’ and, as a result, Gary and Rosie can find no real allies.

This unexpected perception of events is to be expected in The Slap. Any preconceptions you may have about the reactions of the characters are turned on their head. Culture, identity and background play an enormous part in this story. All stereotypes of the laid-back, sun-kissed, bleach-blonde surfer-types that we’ve come to expect from Australians are shattered as Tsiolkas teaches us about how close to the surface each ancestor’s nationality is in this new country.

We see this in Hector, Harry’s cousin. While his wife, Aisha, is quick to stick by her friend, Rosie, Hector works hard to defend his cousin. Both Hector and Harry look up to the older generation in their Greek family and know that honour plays an important role in their eyes in spite of whether the incident was right or wrong. This causes conflict between Hector and his wife, an Anglo-Indian veterinarian, who refuses to take sides “just for the family.”

It’s hard to sum up what makes The Slap so enjoyable and even harder to try and convey how superb and well-written the story is. It could be that each chapter is told through a different character’s voice. It could be that Tsiolkas not only opens our minds to the multicultural society we forget Australia is but tackles quite a lot of controversial subjects in one go. Each narrative he provides – while told in third person – is gripping from the start and, unlike a lot of authors, each of his wide range of characters have layers and a personality, rather than just being thrown into the mix as a cheap stereotype.

Out of all the books I’ve read so far in 2010, this is definitely one of my favourites. Books of this calibre only come along once in a blue moon. I want the excitement for The Slap that I have to be infectious, so I’m urging everyone to get their hands on a copy as soon as possible. It’s been a long time since I’ve held a page-turner like this in my hands. The story is gripping, the characters are dynamic and realistic, and the writing is a pleasure to read. I will definitely be on the lookout for further work by Tsiolkas.