Last Night of Freedom was a whirlwind of a book, impossible to turn away from until you knew how it ended. The nastiness of the characters and the scenario were so powerful, I felt genuinely uncomfortable until the very last page (and maybe for a while after, too). There are hints of folk horror here, but it's really about the darkest side of human nature. A superb read.
On a stag party in a remote part of the Lake District, four old university friends are dragged into a bizarre local ritual. Immersed in a fight for their lives - only one of them is guaranteed to make it home… Fifteen years after graduation, four old university friends get together to celebrate Luke’s stag party. Tucked away in a remote village in the Lake District, they expect a weekend of real ale, log fires and gentle hikes – but a stag party of locals have other ideas.Unwillingly drawn into one-upmanship and animosity, the four friends find themselves being hunted…
The forensic level of detail I've come to expect from Parker's work was ever present here as this documentary text took one snaking turn after another. The unflinching gaze at the horror, both in terms of violence and the whole tradwife scene, the tightly wound plot, everything about this was stunning. It continues to live rent free in my head to this day.
Everyone remembers the Heart of Solomon murders: three young married couples slaughtered around the dinner table, their bodies desecrated, in the UK's first and only purpose-built Tradwife community.
And no suspect ever charged.
Writer Gina Lewis wants to know. Her plan: talk to the people who knew the three dead couples best, and try to understand what brought them to the Heart of Solomon. Puzzle out why they died - and how the "traditional marriage" Arcadia they were promised turned so dangerous, so quickly.
And she'll keep going until she finds the truth. No matter what…
This was my introduction to detective Felix Renn and his uncanny ability to happen upon cases which involve ... well ... the uncanny. Renn feels like a comfortable old jacket - you know exactly where you are with it, thanks to his homage to classic detectives of fiction of the past - and yet maybe there are some things in the pockets you weren't aware of, and this keeps the story fresh. The world building of The Black Lands and the potential therein for more stories has left me hungry for more adventures from Renn.
Back in 1945, the first portal opened--a tear in reality leading from our world into the mysterious Black Lands, a realm of perpetual night filled with strange and deadly entities. Soon another portal appeared. Then another. Today, the government secures every portal they find, but with more and more opening, and no idea how to predict or prevent the next one's arrival, society is teetering on the brink of panic.
Felix Renn knows the Black Lands all too well. His career as a private investigator has dragged him closer to it than most, and has garnered him a reputation for…
Angela has been a spirit painter for years. Channelling the spirits as they commit memories to canvas through her: childhood pets, favourite holiday locations, and sprawling homesteads. But now, something has changed.
The paintings take a dark turn just as her sister, Becky, returns from Italy. People burnt alive, their smouldering remains a vivid, visceral stain on Angela’s canvasses. Already disturbed, her life is thrown into turmoil when a right wing TV news presenter is found incinerated in a facsimile of her new painting.
As the artworks - and charred bodies - mount up, can Angela and Becky find out what’s happening, and how to stop it?
From the Independent Press Award-winning author of Shadow of the Hidden, Pyres is a tense, taut novel of supernatural horror.
