The Whisperers commences with a brilliantly written and cleverly deceptive chapter set in Baghdad’s Iraq Museum in 2003, wherein looters remove some ancient treasures under the cover of a gun battle between US forces and the Fedayeen. Among the items taken is a box, and in that box is another box, and within that box something ancient waits…

Nine years later Parker is asked by Bennett Patchett, a Maine-based restaurant owner, to look into the activities of Joel Tobias, an ex-soldier who appears to be living beyond his means since his return from Iraq and mis-treating one of the waitresses who works for Patchett. Parker’s work uncovers an ex-military-run smuggling operation moving stolen artifacts between Canada and Maine. Patchett admits the real point of the investigation is to see if Tobias is linked to the suicide of his son Damien, another ex-Iraq veteran. And Damien is not the only veteran to have killed himself recently.

This is the novel that moves Charlie Parker firmly and definitively into the realm of the supernatural. Connolly makes no concessions whatsoever about his detective’s dark mythical backbone. Flying in the face of traditionally accepted marketability, these books now need to be more accurately subtitled as Charlie Parker Supernatural Thrillers, as myriad glimpses of what waits on the other side are hinted at in foreboding prose. Otherworldliness drips from the pages as the despicable Herod, a man so sick with cancer he deteriorates before our eyes with each scene, is accompanied by a spirit he calls The Captain as he searches for the box. Herod is a man with esoteric tastes who intends to unleash demons when he acquires the object that whispers to those who own it. And circling around the periphery, waiting to strike and claim what he feels is his, is The Collector, an old adversary of Parker, who is more than just man, and collects more than artifacts.

The Whisperers is an observation on the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, and the effects of combat on soldiers, (Connolly has said so himself). He’s crafted an intricate, humbling and respectful tale weaving damning fact and fanciful hypothesis: the minutiae of military warfare, the everday pressures for returning veterans in an alien civilian world; Sumerian and Mesopotamian culture, artifacts and language; the dusty basements of museums and the eerie world of macabre artifact collections; demonic possession as one manifestation of post traumatic stress disorder.

After Louis and Angel’s tale in The Reapers, and the wrapping up of several elements from Parker’s heritage in The Lovers, The Whisperers does feel like a bridging novel in the mythos of Charlie Parker – another tense, clue-filled dirt track on his personal excavationary road-trip to hell, or heaven, or somewhere else in between. But this is necessary. We’re getting closer to some sort of end, but only Connolly knows how long it’ll take.

Long may the Charlie Parker mythos endure.

By setting the events about 15 to 20 years after the outbreak, Ryan is able to introduce an established belief system, a quasi-religion, to the lore of the zombie. Mary lives in an isolated village, surrounded by fences that keep out the hungry undead that wander the landscape. The village is in the middle of a huge forest that seemingly goes on forever. Or at least that is what the children and teenagers are told, for this village is governed by the Sisterhood, a group of elder women who maintain the status-quo through strict tutelage of the Scripture, a regime of hard work and constant vigilance, and a societal set-up that ensures the best possible chance for the continuance of the family line.The villagers live in fear of breaches of the fence by the Unconsecrated, and the maintenance of these defences is the responsibility of the Guardians, the healthy young men of the village. Mary is sure there is more to the world than just the village, for her mother has told her of the ocean. She questions the teachings of the Sisters and is unable to rid herself of the selfish urge to leave what she has come to consider the prison she has lived in all her life, to explore the world beyond the forest, regardless of the risks.

Mary’s mother is Infected, bitten as she gets too close to the fence, having glimpsed the wandering corpse of her husband nearby. Mary allows her mother to make the ultimate decision: to be beheaded, or be allowed to turn and released into the forest at the moment of death, to Return Unconsecrated. Her mother decides to be with her husband and to fulfil her marriage vows. Mary’s brother Jed will not forgive her decision to allow their mother such a choice and bars her from his house. Seemingly abandoned by Harry, who had expressed a desire to take her to the Harvest Celebration, and in love with his brother Travis, who has chosen hr best friend Cass, Mary is brought under the wing of the Sisterhood – for such is the fate of all unbetrothed young women. Within the thick stone walls of the Cathedral, a place of locked doors, shadowy tunnels and whispering Sisters, Mary discovers not all is as it seems – an Outsider has come through one of the gates.

The Forest of Hands & Teeth brings to mind the closeted, superstitious environment of M. Night Shamalayn’s The Village, with its reliance on ritual in daily life to hold back the unknown threat at its periphery, and possibly even at its very core. But there the simliarity ends as the Unconsecrated are absolutely recognizable, (‘they are us’, remember), and it is this closeness that creates the quandries that Mary and her friends must overcome to ensure their own survival once their secure existence becomes a desperate flight along the strange paths that lead outwards from the village through the forest.

Geek bits! Ryan, in keeping with tradition, has left the reason for the outbreak vague: with some hearsay and a few brief sentences from the Scriptures. She pays homage to the Romero films by having Mary come across an old New York Times with the headline: INFECTION SWEEPS THROUGH CENTRAL STATES: CITIZENS URGED NORTH; and the The system of ropes, gates and pulleys that manage the village’s gates, echo those seen in Day of the Dead. Her zombies are traditional shamblers that deteriorate over time through their own exertions, rather than through decay; and there’s the odd fast-paced zombie, which are seen as anomalies and possibly, an evolutionary step.

The Forest of Hands & Teeth has many strengths: in the landscape in which this tale is set; in the details, beliefs and history hinted at, or left unwritten and unspoken; and, crucially, within the first-person perspective of Mary. A girl who is forced to grow into a woman torn, trapped between a responsibility for her people, her village and a certain way of life; her passionate need to win the man she loves, and her equally romantic dreams of escape and discovery, of the ocean. A female author is somewhat of a rarity in this particular sub-genre, as is a female protagonist, so I believe Carrie Ryan’s The Forest of Hands & Teeth will come to be seen as a unique, evocative and savagely poignant take on the post-apocalyptic world of the zombie.

And get this: it’s a young adult title. So buy one for yourself, and one for your Infected child who you keep locked up in the shed…

D’Lacey’s second novel, Garbage Man, takes us straight to the seeds of an impending environmental apocalypse, allowing us to watch as its roots spread intractably throughout the town of Shreve, a town that is just like any other in today’s United Kingdom.

Mason Brand is an outsider, a man who turned his back on society and his once successful career as a photographer. Living in the deepest countryside, with an old farmer as his guide, Brand learnt about himself, about the nature of nature and its relationship with man. He understands nature evolves to survive, that its processes cannot be predicted and that it simply doesn’t sit back and take abuse. He’s heard and responded to ‘the calling’. Now, giving society one last chance before he retreats forever into the wilds, he lives quietly in Shreve, shunned by almost everyone in the town, the town eccentric.

Shreve sits next to a massive landfill site, a noxious influence when the wind blows in the direction of the town. This influence is spreading, the land unable to cope with the rubbish and the poisonous chemicals being pumped into the earth. And when this brew also contains unwanted human matter, and is imbued with malicious intent, guilt and greed, it shouldn’t be surprising that a strange hybridised life-form, the fecalith, emerges from the sticken ground. Mason Brand has seen the signs; once again he’s heard the calling, and this time it’s right on his doorstep, it has a message and a command he cannot deny.

I loved Brand’s character, a figure I immediately found myself able to associate with during these harsh concretised times. After a solid week’s work, go for a walk, out of earshot of traffic if possible, and feel that money/work/time focus flow out of you to be replaced by whatever you allow… It’s a simple thing to do, but there’s certainly the ability for all of us to hear ‘the calling’ in one form or another, no matter where you live, or what your feelings are for the countryside.

D’Lacey’s especially adept at showing us the everyday stresses that afflict Shreve’s teenagers, their blossoming but untrusting relationships, their already jaded world-views, the parental and peer pressure that blinkers their thoughts, reducing their aspirations to the mundane. This frustration and jealousy threatens to overwhelm at times, (but isn’t that just how the real world works anyway?), but D’Lacey manages the trick of energising his characters through these emotions, making us care for them, or at least stay interested in them.

As the garbage crawls and spreads throughout Shreve the lives of the protagonists draw closer together through Mason Brand, the only one who understands what is about to happen, the man who is mainly responsible for that vital evolutionary stage of the fecalith, the struggle for sentience. Geoff Nelder’s already suggested that Garbage Man should have been called Gaia’s Revenge as it most definitely shares an outlook with James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis: the earth as a single organism, everything affecting everything else. As with MEAT, there is a strong moral message; a message of caution that D’Lacey interweaves seamlessly with solid horror plotting, without stinting on the gore and cleverly paced action.

Fast becoming the master of contemporary eco-horror, D’Lacey’s voice is absolutely unique in the field; and the final chapters, depicting an evolution of almost biblical proportions are simply stunning.

Garbage Man is published on May 7th 2009 by Bloody Books.

Joseph D’Lacey and Bill Hussey (The Absence) are celebrating the publication of their second novels with a tour of some haunted locations around the United Kingdom; and with readings and signings at the Wood Green Bookshop on May 6th, and at Borders on Oxford Street in London on May 7th. They’ll also be promoting the Horror Reanimated website, as well as giving away a limited edition Horror Reanimated chapbook, Echoes, to anyone who attends.

Note: I work with Joseph D’Lacey and Bill Hussey on the Horror Reanimated website.

Please check out the Stories page where you can find details of my published writing.

I have no intention of making The Great White Space a daily destination as, for me, (at least at the moment), the writing and publication of said writing doesn’t progress quickly enough to warrant daily updates. However, placing some news and stories, a few book and film reviews, as well as some other snippets of genre-related news here and there might hopefully make this a place of interest, and somewhere to return now and then.