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grubstlodger's review
4.0
This is a collection of three Leon Garfield short stories and I’m sure I’ve read it before. I checked my bookshelves, I looked at my reviews and records, if I did read them, it was before 2011 but I must have, I remembered so many details.
It’s packaged like ghost stories but only the first story, The Restless Ghost is. It’s also the first appearance of Bostock and Harris, who would later be the main characters in two novels. Their personalities weren’t quite as defined as in the full novels but they are essentially the same, risk-taking boys with too much imagination and a tendency to cause trouble.
The boys hate a sexton in a church in Hove. He’s horrible, frightening and is far too vigorous in his efforts to keep boys out of his graveyard. Years ago the ghost of a drummer boy had been seen patrolling the area but had been rumbled as a ruse by a group of smugglers who were later hanged, the boy himself disappeared. Bostock and Harris decide to recreate the phosphoresce the original smugglers used and be the ghost themselves, this all goes out of hand - as we now expect from these two. The story is entertaining, it has a good little twist at the end. I’m not sure that it’s a particularly creepy or frightening ghost story in itself but it did keep me fixed till the end.
The Second story is , this is the one where my feeling of deja vu really kicked in. It is such a peculiar little story that it’s not a ‘type’ and so the details really popped out. It’s about a Dutch painter and his apprentice going on a ship to paint a battle with the English. It’s a nifty little story, the painter is an absolutely spineless man with poor personal hygiene and extreme rudeness - but it’s all worth putting up with for his genius at capturing an event on paper with a full sweep of humanity that his other actions wouldn’t suggest. It’s the shortest of the stories here but it introduces a really under-represented part of English history, the Dutch naval wars and is a pretty interesting little story in itself.
The last story, is the longest and the one I had the most deja-vu moments about. I remembered a character finding themselves in a confined space with irons flying about and I remembered a line about the ship without its sails up looking like a house without a roof. The story itself is about the dramatic events on a ship transporting convicted felons, including mutiny, murder and love-at-first-site. Again, it’s a very good story but I was so nagged by the feeling I’d read it already and trying to work out where, that I was a little distracted.
It's taken me a month to realise - the last two stories in this collection were also the last two in Mr Corbett's Ghost, I'm glad I realised that and am not going mad.
It’s packaged like ghost stories but only the first story, The Restless Ghost is. It’s also the first appearance of Bostock and Harris, who would later be the main characters in two novels. Their personalities weren’t quite as defined as in the full novels but they are essentially the same, risk-taking boys with too much imagination and a tendency to cause trouble.
The boys hate a sexton in a church in Hove. He’s horrible, frightening and is far too vigorous in his efforts to keep boys out of his graveyard. Years ago the ghost of a drummer boy had been seen patrolling the area but had been rumbled as a ruse by a group of smugglers who were later hanged, the boy himself disappeared. Bostock and Harris decide to recreate the phosphoresce the original smugglers used and be the ghost themselves, this all goes out of hand - as we now expect from these two. The story is entertaining, it has a good little twist at the end. I’m not sure that it’s a particularly creepy or frightening ghost story in itself but it did keep me fixed till the end.
The Second story is , this is the one where my feeling of deja vu really kicked in. It is such a peculiar little story that it’s not a ‘type’ and so the details really popped out. It’s about a Dutch painter and his apprentice going on a ship to paint a battle with the English. It’s a nifty little story, the painter is an absolutely spineless man with poor personal hygiene and extreme rudeness - but it’s all worth putting up with for his genius at capturing an event on paper with a full sweep of humanity that his other actions wouldn’t suggest. It’s the shortest of the stories here but it introduces a really under-represented part of English history, the Dutch naval wars and is a pretty interesting little story in itself.
The last story, is the longest and the one I had the most deja-vu moments about. I remembered a character finding themselves in a confined space with irons flying about and I remembered a line about the ship without its sails up looking like a house without a roof. The story itself is about the dramatic events on a ship transporting convicted felons, including mutiny, murder and love-at-first-site. Again, it’s a very good story but I was so nagged by the feeling I’d read it already and trying to work out where, that I was a little distracted.
It's taken me a month to realise - the last two stories in this collection were also the last two in Mr Corbett's Ghost, I'm glad I realised that and am not going mad.
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