That Fatal Shore (29) (Black Shuck Shadows)

Book #78I am completely invested in Hogan's writing, and if youre not as yet, I suggest you search his name here and just buy the lot. Anyway, I eagerly ordered this, his maybe-final book in this particular playground. For the uninitiated, Hogan has been taking the characters from all the scary films we grew up loving, and intertwining them into a huge narrative, telling short stories and vignettes across the history of genre cinema and across the globe.We finally wash up in Australia, in this neat and compelling postscript to the series (if that's what it is). And it's here that I thought I may flounder somewhat. You see, Australian cinema has sort of passed me by. I've never seen Picnic At Hanging Rock, or Night of Fear. I got halfway through Wolf Creek and turned it off, have bad memories of Razorback- which was the first VHS tape I attempted to copy, largely unsuccessfully, and while Lake Mungo has sat in my wishlist for a while, I've never pulled the trigger. So would I connect to this one as much as I did the previous three (or four, including Death Line)?Well, yes, is the answer. Again, Hogan rises to the challenge of writing in the voices of his cast with skill, and once I figured out which actors he was portraying- again, Google has been my friend- I was once more shocked at how *right* everything seemed. And once more, I'm left with a bulging wishlist of DVDs to get- which I have renamed "Bloody Sean Hogan's Fault" in his honour.The story this time, a disturbing drive across the Outback, imbued with deep dread, and the tales told along the way, is compelling enough for me to finish the book in one sitting. I sort of want to go back to the start, 'England's Screaming', and read them all over again now.Sean, if you're reading this- whatever you choose to do next, you have a purchaser on day one, and a reader who will put aside whatever else is currently on the sofa-side coffee table in favour of whatever drops through my front door thereafter. In the parlance of the Internet, "just take my bloody money!"