Whitstable Stephen Volk   As a writer with a penchant for the macabre, Stephen Volk’s considerable skills have occasionally been utilised in re-energising notions initially created by other hands, and finding new and fascinating territory to explore in previously explored paths (it’s a welcome and serendipitous predilection that the writer shares with Kim Newman, with whom Volk recently collaborated – along with other writers — on the portmanteau horror play The Hallowe’en Sessions, directed by Sean Hogan). Whitstable is a beguiling novella explores two of Volk’s favourite subjects, the great British Hammer Films and the latter’s most reliable actor, the late Peter Cushing (the title refers to the actor’s much loved seaside home). The conceit here is to place the actor’s screen personality in a contemporary setting where the kind of supernatural evil he routinely battled is given a modern equivalent. The book works both as a tip of the hat to one of the British screen’s most imperishable icons and as a piece of utterly engrossing narrative of the kind that we customarily expect from Volk.

Whitstable by Stephen Volk is published by Spectral Press

Barry Forshaw