by C.K. McDonnell
isbn: 9780552177344
Series: Stranger Times #1
Publication Date: January 6, 2022
Pages: 425
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction
Publisher: Penguin Books
There are dark forces at work in our world (and in Manchester in particular), so thank God The Stranger Times is on hand to report them . . .
A weekly newspaper dedicated to the weird and the wonderful (but mostly the weird), it is the go-to publication for the unexplained and inexplicable.
At least that's their pitch. The reality is rather less auspicious. Their editor is a drunken, foul-tempered and foul-mouthed husk of a man who thinks little of the publication he edits. His staff are a ragtag group of misfits. And as for the assistant editor . . . well, that job is a revolving door - and it has just revolved to reveal Hannah Willis, who's got problems of her own.
When tragedy strikes in her first week on the job The Stranger Times is forced to do some serious investigating. What they discover leads to a shocking realisation: some of the stories they'd previously dismissed as nonsense are in fact terrifyingly real. Soon they come face-to-face with darker forces than they could ever have imagined.
I like perusing the publisher catalogs on bnccatalist.com, and I found this yesterday. It just sounded like something I needed to try. Thanks to next day delivery, even on a Sunday!, I’m 134 pages in and it’s funny. The pull quotes on the back compare it to Pratchett, which, sorry, but not. What it reminds me of so far is a paranormal version of Snatch, or Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
I’m intrigued, and I’m liking it. It’s definitely different.