Stuart James

Wow! This was a great psychological crime thriller!

A backstory:

Jake and Kate are tired of London with all the traffic and noise so they move out to the country where they can get away from it all and have some peace and quiet. The house that they find through a real estate agent is perfect for them as it is tucked away behind some iron gates and just has a couple or so neighbors.

With any house though nothing is perfect and they find out that the previous occupants of the house - the Prescott's just vanished from the house and no one can seem to find them. That gives them an unsettling feeling as they wonder what happened to them and even thoughts of the house being haunted flitted through their minds.

With some trepidation they go ahead and settle into the house along with meeting their neighbors Pete and Linda who seem to be very friendly as they welcome them to the neighborhood. But even with nice neighbors and the secluded house, Jake feels that there is just something "off" about the house, but when Jake and Kate find a dvd in their house that is a film with the family of the Prescott's is when things become weird and the more they try to find out what happened to the previous family the more they become entrapped within a mystery so entangled they will be fighting for their lives by the time it is all over as you never truly know who your neighbors are and Jake finds out more than he wants to know before it is all over.

Thoughts:

This is my first time reading this author and was happy to finally read one of his books as I have been wanting to read this book for a long time. I was captured right away with the characters and the mystery surrounding the Prescott's as I was wanting to know why they disappeared. The mystery was so deep that I thought this book would make a great movie as there were so many twists and turns that I had a hard time putting the book down!

The author sets up a slow and building tension within the story bringing the mystery of what happened to the Prescott family finally to life near the end of the book. During the meantime though the mystery and suspense is built up along the way and I felt for the characters as they tried to figure out what they had landed themselves into.

Other things happen within the storyline to the characters Jake and Kate as they try to dig up what is going on with their house and the neighbors. This book kept me intrigued throughout the story which I ended up reading the last 50% within a few hours as things started to escalate within the story and I just kept reading to see what would happen next. There is a major twist that I didn't see coming which sent this book into overdrive! I have some more books by this author simmering on my kindle that I will need to step into this coming year. Giving this one five Tension Terror stars!

To see images and more thoughts, please see my blog:
https://booknookretreat.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-house-on-rectory-lane-by-stuart...… (altro)

Loosely based on the Jimmy Sangster screenplay of the Joseph E. Levine distributed 1959 film of the same name, Jack the Ripper is Stuart James attempt to turn a pretty standard and somewhat gimmicky (some theaters showed the bloody climax of the black-and-white film in vivid color) exploitation horror film into a decent novel. Using the original screenplay as more of an outline, Stuart James injects considerably more character, plot, and even blood - the source film doesn't even feature any dead prostitutes - into this re-imagining of the Jack the Ripper legend. Like most books/films based on this subject matter, the main focus is on explaining who the legendary mystery murderer really was, and the explanation offered here isn't the most compelling or outlandish you're likely to find, although the answer to what happened to him is probably the most unique aspect of the book. What sets this apart from all of the other Jack the Ripper books out there is Stuart James' natural abilities at storytelling and creating an atmosphere that practically drips with blood and fog. If you've already read ten or twenty different "accounts" of Jack the Ripper, and odds are you have, then adding this one to your list of conquered titles won't do any harm, especially since this edition also includes an Afterword detailing the film origins of the novel.… (altro)