North West Reads Book 25: The Stranger Times by C. K. McDonnell

Hannah had wondered whether the job advertisement was genuine, but as she was starting afresh having moved from London to Manchester leaving her old, comfortable life behind, she could not afford to be choosy. She had hoped to get a job at an upmarket furniture store, Storn, which had opened a branch to serve Manchester and Cheshire’s wealthy residents. However, her old employer, Joyce, was unable to help her and Hannah did not have a good CV. Apart from her old job all she had was an unfinished degree from Durham University and a bit of experience doing voluntary work. This was by no means enough to gain even a half decent job in this busy metropolis. The job spec matched her situation:

‘Publication seeks desperate human being with capability to form sentences using English language. No imbeciles, optimists or Simons need apply’.

Apart from her lack of qualifications and experience Hannah was hampered by events of her recent past. She had dumped her philandering husband but her attempt at a bit of revenge had gone so desperately wrong that she had made the newspapers, hence Hannah was using the surname Willis instead of Drinkwater. Her new start also meant that she wanted nothing from her ex, so the prosperous life, the money and the house had gone. The job may be just a joke and not exist but, in her position, she needed to go and find out.

As it turned out the job ad was genuine but the publication and people running it were nothing like she had ever met before. The offices of the Stranger Times turned out to be in a dilapidated church, the ‘Church of Old Souls’ it said over the entrance. It was here she was greeted by Simon, the person referred to in the job ad, a very young and very enthusiastic man who desperately wanted the paper to take him on as a reporter. He wasn’t even put off by the sight that greeted Hannah of a nattily dressed man standing on the roof threatening to throw himself off, being talked to by a younger man who did not seem unduly alarmed at the situation. On entering the building Hannah was greeted by Grace, the Office Manager, who asked Stella, a spiky 15-year-old intern, to take her to the editor’s office for interview. Hannah was unsure as to the actual position at the paper that she was being interviewed for, not made any clearer by her being referred to as ‘the new Tina’, the old Tina having left the job after unsuccessfully throwing a stapler at the Editor, whose office Hannah had now been shown into.

Vincent Banecroft’s office resembled an explosion at a rubbish dump. He had been Editor at the Stranger Times for around six months and, quite literally, lived in his office. Before this he had been a high-flyer in Fleet Street, but a bereavement had destroyed this life and career. Now he spent his life getting drunk and being exceedingly rude to his staff, only kept from being foul-mouthed as well by the God-fearing Grace who will have no bad language and keeps the belligerent Vincent in check on this score at least. Although sozzled most of the time, Vincent is still very sharp and perceptive. Noting Hannah’s CV he deducts correctly that her marriage had ended, knows what happened to make her excellent fodder for the tabloids and takes a stab at who her husband had had his affair with. Noting to Hannah that this was the place were careers came to die and knowing that she had few options (and had made the fewest spelling errors on her application and CV) he takes her on. The role, as it turns out, is as Assistant Editor, so she will have to liaise between Vincent and the staff, not an easy job as Tina had discovered.

Formal introductions are made to the rest of the team, that is after Vincent had threatened to shoot Reggie Fairfax, the man on the roof, with his blunderbuss but only succeeded in shooting himself in the foot and was carted off to hospital. Reggie was the resident paranormal expert and Ox Chen, the young man trying to reason with him when he was on the roof, was a ufologist. Sitting in the nearby Admiral’s Arms Hannah decides that her colleagues are eccentric but also very interesting and that behind Stella’s ‘street ragamuffin’ persona was a very intelligent and well-read young lass. It is Stella who compiles the paper, typesetting it on her laptop. Her background was a bit of a mystery. Having been caught breaking into the premises she’d been given a job. Grace had given her a place to live by taking her into her own home.

Hannah had almost blown the interview at one point. Vincent emphatically told her, when she saw what sort of stories the Stranger Times published, that they do not make things up! They report on things that people claim to have seen or experienced, no matter how bizarre or incredible. There are plenty of stories out there as it turns out. Soon after starting her job Hannah experiences the delight that is ‘Loon Day’, that is an open day at the premises for the Great British Public to bring them stories that no other publication would give any consideration to. As Reggie and Ox are away in Scotland investigating a toilet that had been possessed by the Devil, Hannah has to deal with a full day of weirdness on her own. When at one point during the day a naked Rastafarian man walks in, Hannah finally meets the last member of the Stranger Times crew. Manny prints the paper from his workplace down in the basement.

Out of all the visitors that day, however, one did stand out to Hannah. Tina Merchant’s husband, Gary, had gone missing and was not returning her calls. They had a daughter, Cathy, who had cancer. Tina had come to their office as he had told her that he’d found a solution to help their daughter involving a man and ‘magic’. She tells Hannah she’s worried that someone had filled his head with mad ideas, but then in distress, she leaves the premises. Gary, as it turns out, is still alive and in Manchester. The man he spoke of, an American by the name of Charlie Moretti, has indeed offered to help him so long as Gary does what he wants. For this Gary has paid a high price, but not in monetary terms. The only thing that mattered was to save his daughter, so he agreed to do what Moretti wanted. Moretti already had some premises in which to work, a disused warehouse in a quiet area of town, and had been contacting members of the magical underworld of Manchester that lived, hidden in plain sight, alongside the non-supernatural population. What he wanted from them both he knew, and they knew, was strictly illegal, but Moretti was both powerful and cunning and able to obtain everything he needed. His only problem is Gary, who does not always do as he is told. His mistakes start to draw unwanted attention not only from the Stranger Times team, but also from the Greater Manchester Police.

Detective Inspector Sturgess enjoyed cases that were a bit unusual, and a couple of recent deaths fitted this bill exactly; an apparent suicide from a near completed skyscraper and the death of a homeless man in the Castlefield area of the city. Above where the body of the homeless man had been found some brickwork on a building had been damaged and the injuries on the body suggested that he was the cause of it. This damage, however, was at a considerable height from the ground, so how this occurred was a mystery. It was at the scene of the death from the skyscraper that Sturgess, and his colleague, Detective Sergeant Wilkinson, cross paths with Vincent and Hannah. Vincent’s behaviour was enough to bring on one of Sturgess migraines, but he does like Hannah and when he sees her later on waiting for a bus and experiencing Manchester’s ‘malevolent’ rain he gives her a lift. Hannah is unable to give him any more information about the deaths, but she realises that Sturgess has an open mind on the causes of them; he tells her that he had already seen some weird stuff during his time in the police.

Hannah begins to find that she likes this job; the strange stories and even stranger people were fascinating. This was far more interesting than selling expensive furniture to Manchester and Cheshire’s nouveau riche. Another skill, formerly regarded as a curse by Hannah, was the fact that strangers liked to talk to her, effectively a superpower for a journalist. She and Reggie investigate the Castlefield death and enter parts of Manchester where the homeless gather, a hidden world away from the luxury flats and penthouses of businesspeople, media celebrities and premiership footballers. ‘Karen’, a thin and nervous young woman, tells them she saw a ‘creature’ the night the man died. When Ox unearths evidence that this creature does exist the Stranger Times team are faced with the shocking idea that some of the stories brought to them could be very real, and very dangerous. What lurked in the shadows in Manchester would turn out to be quite a revelation to the team and looked to be providing the paper with its biggest scoop ever. The Stranger Times had a far more important role than to provide an outlet for weird and wonderful stories of Manchester’s stranger residents or an entertaining read for the rest of them. For the magical underworld their investigations could be a matter of life and death.

This is the first novel in the fabulous and very funny Stranger Times series that are marvellously weird and addictive reads. Along with the main story the back stories of the characters emerge as they investigate the complicated magical underworld of Manchester. McDonnell plainly loves Manchester, the places, people and culture but there are sly digs at some sides of the modern world and those who inhabit it. The dark and at times, dangerous world that the Stranger Times crew investigate means that the novels are not only funny and entertaining stories, but cover themes of love, loss, loyalty, integrity and friendship; standing up for what is right and confronting those who use their power for their own selfish needs regardless of the harm and mayhem they may cause as a result.