Paul Finch - Groaning Shadows

[dem]

Paul Finch - Groaning Shadows (Gray Matter novella 04: Gray Friar July 2009)

Gary Fry

The Sundered Flesh
We Are The Shadows
Their Bones Picked Clean
The Baleful Dead

Blurb
Brand new novellas of mystery, madness and supernatural torment.

"I saw hands gripping the edges of the trapdoor that were grey with filth, and though narrow and wizened, bearing long, yellow fingernails that were more like talons." - The Sundered Flesh

"… it was a drear and dismal monument to an age-old problem that even the most modern thinkers had failed to resolve: the fate of the criminally insane." - We Are The Shadows

"… he was slashed across his face, first downwards and then diagonally, blows that left lacerations in flesh and bone so deep that his eyeballs popped out onto his cheeks."- Their Bones Picked Clean

"… to my left I fancied I’d just spotted movement … awkward, capering movement, like something crippled or deformed keeping a steady pace with us." - The Baleful Dead

Travel with Paul Finch along four twisting trails, any one of which could lead to your worst nightmare.

The decayed seaside town, where the actions of a depraved sex attacker only hint at the evil that has wakened. The Cornish island, where a deserted fishing village stands in memorial to a menace from the mists of time.

The inner city slum, where a derelict church houses something unspeakable. The grotto in the wood, to which far more than gruesome memories are attached.

Wound up in the West End this afternoon, three quid in my pocket, not very expectant of scoring anything worthwhile in the second hand bookshops, but you have to look, don't you? Have found the occasional Hamlyn and Leisure horrors out front of Any Amount Of Books before, but just about the last thing i expected to spot was a Gray Friarspublication, and by a Black Book regular, too.

Don't know what it was made me dive in on the second of the four novella's, but We Are The Shadows is shaping up as a Finch classic. Friday night in Kelgarth, near South Shields. Dawn-Marie Wilkinson, 18, worse the wear for alco-pops, has been separated from her girl pals on the ritual pub and club crawl, and can't find them anywhere. As she makes her way home cursing, she's attacked by a bearded man wearing a donkey jacket with a face she recognises all too well. He batters her with a brick and rapes her.

Freelance Journalist Bob Blackwood is in the habit of paying cops for insider info, and what Det. Constable Les Cannock has to tell him is potential front page screaming headline material. The assault on Dawn-Marie is the third of its kind in recent weeks, but the perpetrator can't be the same person as each victim describes an entirely different man. The first girl depicts her assailant as a Reginald Christie lookalike. Victim number two was evidently ravished by Neville Heath. Dawn-Marie, it seems, has survived an encounter with the Yorkshire Ripper.

"What have we got here? Some kind of crazy club?"

To be very continued

[weirdmonger]

My real-time review of Paul Finch's Groaning Shadows;
nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2010/08/24/groaning-shadows-by-paul-finch/

[dem]

"She fished a dog-eared paperback from her pocket. I was a self-proclaimed history of mass murder in the UK, entitled Butchered Britain. The author was one Edgar Allenby.
Bob was surprised. "You're a copper and you read books like this?"
"Why do the homework when I've got you guys to do it for me?"
"You'd better not have any of my books in your collection. Not after all the years I've been made to feel like a tosser for writing them."
"Check through it, will you?"
"He's not much of a writer, Allenby, you know."
"All I need is some stats."
"Walks around at conventions like he's God's Gift."
"The stats, Bob."

Convinced that he's onto something big, Rob takes a room above Mike's Bar, Kelgarth's #1 trouble spot, and receives a visit from his ex-wife, Ellen, a detective constable on the local force whose career he all but ruined when he ran a feature story on a covert police operation. Ellen warns him off, knowing what little good it will do her, but he at least promises to play it fair. He doesn't like the idea of a vicious sex criminal at large any more than she does.
Consulting his highly illegal, self-compiled database, Rob comes up with a completely implausible suspect, but having nothing better to go on, arranges an interview with serial rapist James Van Ruthers, a patient of Dr. Hawkins at the Kelgarth Secure Hospital. Van Ruthers, a paranoid schizophrenic, proudly claims full credit for the crimes, and the M.O.'s bear his hallmark, but how could this sicko possibly be involved when he's confined to a room and kept under 24 hour surveillance?

Meanwhile, just as Van Ruthers smugly informed him, there's been another attack. Last night as junkie hooker Angeline was touting for business, Brady and Hindley come kerb-crawling ...

Another lead. Rob is bludgeoned outside The Rusty Anchor and thrown off the pier by persons bearing more than a passing resemblance to John Haigh and the Black Panther. It's only the intervention of Ellen and her team save him from drowning. In the struggle, he'd managed to tear a label from 'Haigh's coat, supplied by Quantock & Sons, a local fancy dress outlet. Quantock had supplied a bulk order to the short-lived Kelgarth Crime Museum, a tourist attraction in a dead town nobody visits through choice.

They visit the derelict wax museum. Haigh, Bradey, Hindley and Sutcliffe are all stood where they should be, but there's something damn eerie about the place, and it's easy to imagine every rustle of skirt indicates somebody creeping around ...

All roads lead back to Van Ruthers. He has to be involved, just as surely as an enabler in the Secure Hospital is making whatever he's up to possible.

To reveal the mystery behind the attacks would be a spoiler too cruel, but an action-packed climax brings Ellen face to no face with the most notorious Victorian villain of all in the hospital gym, while across town at the Wax Museum, Rob comes up against a serial killer tag-team comprised of Dennis Nilsen, Catherine 'acid queen' Wilson and axe-murdering Gestapo wannabe Patrick MacKay.

My spidy sense remains intact. I've yet to read a Paul Finch story i din't have a good time with, but We Are The shadows is up there with Special Powers from Zombie Apocalypse as an absolute personal favourite.

[paulfinch]

What can I say, D?

Keep going. Keep enjoying. ;D