Will Macmillan Jones

I have to confess that this is my favourite genre of the author's. It reminds me of the Wheatley books I used to devour in my teens. The strength of these is that horrific things happen to ordinary people. As the lottery ads say, 'It could be you!'

The Curse of Clyffe House

Amazon.com

My review -

Sheila, a neighbour of Mr Jones, the unwitting and unwilling participant in several previous supernatural tales, is writing a book. She has an urgent deadline and wants company at a remote holiday cottage near the South Wales Coastal Path. Eagerness makes her go but nervousness about being their alone makes her urge Mr Jones to accompany her. Cliffe House is a seriously unquiet dwelling.

I confess I would have left on the first night but Sheila and Jones, though scared, are made of sterner stuff. Eventually, Jones calls upon his friend Eric who comes to help. We get yet another tantalising peek behind the curtain of Eric's past. Take a remote cottage, a wild coastal path, a derelict farmhouse and a pre-historic hill fort and all the ingredients are there for a tale of unease. Welsh legend comes to life and the resultant battle is to the death. A very readable story indeed.

Will Macmillan Jones

This second horror story by the author is even better than the first - so... roll on the third!

Portrait of a Girl

Amazon.com

My review - 

This is the second of the author’s horror stories and it takes me back to the kind of Dennis Wheatley books I devoured in my younger days. There’s that sense of menace throughout the story. The hapless Mr Jones, who was hounded by the police when he was an innocent victim in The Showing, is once again drawn into something he cannot control. A portrait of a girl in the local art gallery draws him almost hypnotically and he even begins to dream of it. He goes in to ask the price but it’s far more than he can afford. He leaves his details as an expression of interest, and then, when a young man goes missing and was last seen in the vicinity of the gallery, the police pay their first call upon Mr Jones. More young men fall under the portrait’s baleful influence and once again, Mr Jones has to convince the police he’s not to blame.

This is an engrossing and thoughtful study of a man in the grip of an obsession which has drawn lesser men into peril of their lives. He has the help of a friend to offer him some protection from a very real menace older than them all, and it’s a story which keeps on moving right to the end. Christmas is the time for ghost stories. Draw the curtains, settle down and give this a try!

I received a review copy of this book.