You know the thrill of it. The creep that slithers in from drawing out ancient tales of the undead. The inability to turn away when the whispers begin to ooze out of mouths recanting stories of those dark, gnarly figures that walk soundlessly through the night. Searching, clawing their way out to encompass the unsuspecting......

years ago, in the quaint, picturesque village of Ussalthwaite, Yorkshire (fictional location), twelve-year-old Sydney Parsons was heinously murdered by two boys his own age. No reason was ever given for this crime, and the boys who killed him, known as the ‘Demonic Duo,’ were imprisoned until their release in 2002, when they were each given new identities and lifetime anonymity.Before I sign out, I just wanted to touch on the issue of bullying and how it was portrayed in the book. I'm pleased the author not only included such a relative and timely problem, but didn't shy away from showing it's horror and unpleasantness to the full. I'm always appreciative of diverse characters being added into a book, and I felt the character portrayed with Autism was well done with respect and honor. Having a child with Autism, I could easily recognize the signs and symptoms, and I felt each scene with a realness others who don't experience that lifestyle on a daily basis might not catch as sensitively. Wesolowski also makes serious comments about bullying, the insidious lure of internet challenges, parental neglect, social exclusion, failing welfare systems – and about the cruelty of the herd, the pressure to conform.

Even when Six’s song pairings don’t make much historical sense, they can still be fun, as long as we operate on the principle of “don’t worry about it too much!” Marlow and Moss lampshade the idea that they won’t be portraying Anne Boleyn (Andrea Mascasaet, impeccable comic timing) as the smirking, plotting temptress that so much historical fiction shows us. Instead, Six’s Boleyn is a deadpan valley girl who is very interested in getting “X-rated” with her royal boyfriend, but who breezily declares politics to be “not my thing.”It seems as if Howard has found a savior in Dr. Arlen until she begins to prepare the materials needed to perform the autopsy. She’s only doing her job, but the reader can’t help but feel frustrated with her. Especially, when Howard begins to gain some control and produces a small hum in the hopes that someone will hear it, only to find that Dr. Arlen has turned on some music and drowns out any noises coming from Howard. Elizabeth Barton and Lizzie B. The frozen girl. Who froze? Elizabeth or Lizzie? Vampires and beasts. The Beast from the East. Who was the vampire? Gothic fantasy or flesh and blood? Tankerville Tower. Haunted? Or the space where fear is perpetuated and used for our own means. What really did happen the night Jeffries disappeared, and why did it take a year for his body to surface? Was someone supposedly innocent actually guilty, or was there a supernatural force at play? Can our memories, our interpretations of events which occurred so long ago, particularly when we were young, be trusted, or is everything open to manipulation? Can the person who weaves the threads of the stories together be trusted either? Throughout King’s investigation it is never really in doubt who killed Elizabeth Barton. The evidence against her killers is overwhelming. But the questions that King wants to discover is why they killed her, and if possible, the men’s differing levels of culpability. To do this, he is soon looking into both killers and victim and discovering that not everything is what it seems. The story has always been that Elizabeth was a beautiful, popular, and kind person involved in charity work; her killers’ oddballs and loners. That Elizabeth’s killers murdered her at least in part due to jealousy (the other reason being that one of them believed her to be a vampire). But King soon finds other perspectives, that Elizabeth had secrets and that the killers were not the cardboard cut-out villains they had been portrayed. What happens next is somewhat disturbing to me. I’d like to think that when I die people will let me rest in peace. Unfortunately for the protagonist, a few of the doctors in charge of performing his autopsy aren’t so respectful to the dead. One doctor in particular, Rusty, who thinks Howard has an uncanny resemblance to Michael Bolton, finds it amusing to move Howards mouth in sync with his singing. Thankfully, Dr. Arlen doesn’t find this display very amusing and removes Rusty from the room.

Howard tries to communicate with the doctors multiple times but to no avail. Every time it seems that Howard has a chance, it’s ripped away. It’s a rollercoaster of a story, but not in a scary sense, it’s more frustrating than anything. The way King chose to end the story is so original, it was never expected. I thoroughly enjoyed this short, dark tale about “Howard the Conqueror”. But this is definitely a read I think any mystery lover will enjoy and highly recommend you give this a read! (or listen!)Still, Six has a neat, eye-catching premise and a breezy confidence that seems to say, “Don’t worry about it too much, it’s fun!” every time the details stop making sense. The six ill-fated wives of King Henry VIII of England (divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived) are hosting a pop concert. But the concert also doubles as a contest, with each queen facing off to see who had the worst time as Henry’s wife. Given that there are two separate “beheadeds” in that group and only one “survived,” the competition is stiff. Scott King interviews the now adult teenagers, the chaperones, and a village man with special needs involved in the unfolding of events that took place in Scarclaw Fell that fateful night. Their stories almost form a literary escarpment in which the reader forms the uncertainty of those actions on the edge of reality. What actually happened so long ago? Will one ever really know?