Imagine there was a supernatural chiller that Hammer Films never made. A grand epic produced at the studio’s peak, which played like a cross between the Dracula and Frankenstein films and Dr Terror’s House of Horrors… Four passengers meet on a train journey through Eastern Europe during the First World War, and face a mystery that must be solved if they are to survive. As the Arkangel races through war-torn country side, they must find out: What is in the casket that everyone is so afraid of? What is the tragic secret of the veiled Red Countess who travels with them? Why is their fellow passenger the army brigadier so feared by his own men? And what exactly is the devilish secret of the Arkangel itself? Back in 1989 I was an impressionable fifteen year old and I had just started to develop a passion for reading and a never-ending love for cinema. One of the first books I read, through what I thought at the time were adult eyes, was Roofworld by Christopher Fowler. Meanwhile my introduction to horror cinema, via a wonderful horror obsessed grandmother, was the works of Hammer. Little did I realise some twenty-three years later…

One of the great things about running your own book review website is that you can write about whatever books you want. I have written reviews for a fair number of new releases so far this year so I decided, for a bit of a change of pace, that I would revisit some of the novels that I read as a teenager. Over the coming months, I plan to do a few of these types of posts. I’m keen to cast my jaded adult eyes over some titles to see if they still have the same resonance now as they had then.  Hopefully, if nothing else, this may introduce some new readers to fiction that they may not have experienced before. Have the books survived the ravages of time? Do they still have something to offer? Do I still feel the same way about them as I did before? High above London, on the rooftops of the city, lives a secret society of misfits governed by a bizarre code of honour. It is a world known to only a few people on the streets below – until the murderous battle for its leadership breakout. The first novel I have selected…