Mean Spirit

The lines are open. . . . . . but the messages are sounding bleak for Seffi Callard - cool, charismatic, beautiful and now the world's best-known spiritualist medium. Suddenly a victim of her own remarkable gifts, she's been forced to back away from the glamour and the glow of public adulation, becoming a paranoid recluse at her father's home in the Cotswolds. Maybe the only person who can understand Seffi's crisis is her old schoolteacher Marcus Bacton, who was the first to identify her skills. Marcus, now editor of an obscure journal of the paranormal, sends his assistant, American journalist Grayle Underhill, to Seffi's rural hideaway. . . and into a nightmare. Who is stalking Seffi Callard - and from which side of the grave? The search for an answer will involve disillusioned police detective Bobby Maiden and the eccentric entertainer Cindy Mars-Lewis - himself facing vilification by his public after a series of bizarre tragedies linked to the national obsession with getting rich quick. At a Victorian neo-Gothic castle in the Malvern Hills, they discover that, for one psychopathic killer, getting rich is less important than never getting dead. Brilliant and original, Will Kingdom's second novel - full of sharp characterization, black humour and electrifying suspense - will convince you that there really are more crimes in heaven and on earth. .