This Charming Man
Ratings19
Average rating4.4
Vampires do not exist. Everyone knows this. So it's particularly annoying when they start popping up around Manchester . . .
Nobody is pleased about it. Not the Founders, the secret organisation for whom vampires were invented as an allegory, nor the Folk, the magical people hidden in plain sight who only want a quiet life. And definitely not the people of Manchester, because there is nothing more irksome than being murdered by an allegory run amok. Somebody needs to sort this out fast before all Hell really breaks loose - step forward the staff of The Stranger Times.
It's not like they don't have enough to be dealing with. Assistant Editor Hannah has come back from getting messily divorced to discover that someone is trying to kidnap a member of their staff and while editor Vincent Banecroft would be delighted to see the back of any of his team, he doesn't like people touching his stuff - it's the principle of the thing.
Throw in a precarious plumbing situation, gambling debts, an entirely new way of swearing, and a certain detective inspector with what could be kindly referred to as 'a lot of baggage' and it all adds up to another hectic week in the life of the newspaper committed to reporting the truth that nobody else will touch.
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Series
Series
3 primary books#2 in The Stranger Times
The Stranger Times is a 3-book series with 3 released primary works first released in 2021 with contributions by C.K. McDonnell.
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I always include major spoilers (hidden), to help with my memory issues. Read them at your peril!
2nd in a series, but the first that I have listened to. Excellent narration. Set in Manchester, with a British dark sense of humour, and gritty reality about it, which you don't often find in fantasy stories from other countries. Stranger Times is a magazine which publishes weird stories, I think conspiracy theories and supernatural reports. As a result of whatever happened in the first book someone is out to kidnap the powerful young woman who is hiding out in the magazines offices . They are doing this by getting a plumbing company to install a new bathroom with a hidden trapdoor in the shower . Also several young men are turning into vampires overnight, with no apparent cause. People are being killed, the public is getting restive, detective Sturgeon has both his boss and a shady and powerful “Concerned Citizen” on his back. He and the Stranger Times staff need to work out what's going on and fix it.
Excellent thriller, funny, clever. Really enjoyed it.
This has become a favorite comfort series of mine and I wish McDonnell would release faster (every year is not fast enough)! Found family (kind of), mystery, monsters, fun cast of characters, and a sprinkling of deeper themes, I love everything about it. For some the characters might feel like caricatures that are over the top, and they kind of are, but for me it works. Can't wait for book 3.
I thought The Stranger Times showed a lot of potential, and glad to say that continues through to this one. McDonnell writes with a lot of warmth, and his worldview, which celebrates ordinary humanity while excoriating its worse excesses, is not a million miles from Terry Pratchett's. This is an entertaining and lively read, with a cast of characters you will be rooting for. Here's to more Stranger Times books!
Since reading the first novel I've discovered all the books CK McDonnell has published as Caimh McDonnell. They are lacking the supernatural elements but the voice and humour is the same, and they are all terrific fun and well worth a look
Oh, and Vincent Banecroft is totally the supernatural's very own Jackson Lamb.
