Monthly Archives: July 2023

After his supernatural phase in the late 1980s/early 1990s , with books such as The Alchemist and Faith the emphasis of James’ work shifted slightly to deal with subjects like the implications of technology and the nature of belief, themes … Continue reading →

Seventh track at the end of the seventh month.

Nowadays he’s known primarily as a crime writer, the creator of the multimillion selling Roy Grace series, but there was a time back in the 1980/90s when Peter James was being touted as the UK’s answer to Stephen King, with … Continue reading →

A somewhat experimental review of Douglas Thompson’s novel Ultrameta that was posted to the Case Notes blog at the TTA Press website on 20/1/2011 and which I recovered with the aid of the wonderful Wayback Machine (and I have no idea what … Continue reading →

Another season, another Nic Cage movie.

This is a review that originally appeared on the Case Notes blog at the TTA Press website on 1/5/2010 in a somewhat different form: – A while back I was sent a review copy of Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing (Weidenfeld & Nicolson … Continue reading →

I couldn’t find a decent video for this one, so let’s just remind ourselves what a marvellous cover Aladdin Sane had.

This post follows on from Books Read in 2016, which I posted at the end of June 2023. And for 2017 I read one hundred and thirty three books, down thirty eight from the previous year. As ever during this period of … Continue reading →

Two reviews that originally appeared in Black Static #26:- Before Straub and before King there was William Peter Blatty, and you could argue that his seminal 1971 novel THE EXORCIST (Corgi paperback, 400pp, £7.99), along with Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby and … Continue reading →

Christopher Nolan goes boom.