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The Cold Calling
Will Kingdom
Corgi paperback, 494 pages, £5.99
Published March 1998
ISBN 055214584X
Review by Gerald Houghton (1998)

Here's an odd one: 500 pages of (apparently) grim sub-James Herbert Brit crime/horror. And yet, although everything about The Cold Calling (from the title through the dreadful cover and even the plot synopsis) screams 'run away', journalist Will Kingdom's debut novel is consistently impressive.

That could be because, unfashionably, The Cold Calling is actually a book about its characters rather than events. Characters like policeman Bobby Maiden, victim of a maybe-not-accidental hit and run, restored, Lazarus-like, by the healing hands of one Sister Andy. Like the American 'Holy' Grayle Underhill, a paranormal journo who journeys to the UK looking for her sister, missing after hooking up with New Agers probing ancient stone monuments in the Black Hills. Like the ageing Marcus Bacton, editor of a loon-infested micro-circulation Fortean magazine. And like Cindy the Shaman, a cross-dressing actor-ventriloquist convinced that a serial killer is slaughtering innocents across the land as part of some elaborate pagan plan.

Too much? Yes and no, because Kingdom marshals his large and surprisingly middle-aged cast with genuine skill, forging believable relationships and bestowing upon them - for this kind of novel, at least - strong, well-realised dialogue. And if he does up the oddball ante a tad too far it never quite gets in the way. There are too many pages, but few, if any, are squandered.

And nor does he push the supernatural hokum. Time and again the reader anticipates a special effects blow out, but even the big showdown hangs just the right side of sceptical. Part Wicker Man, part trad whodunnit, part tough gangster thriller, The Cold Calling finally stands revealed as a tidy charmer and Kingdom as a real find. •

'Will Kingdom' is a pseudonym for Phil Rickman, something we weren't aware of when the press copy arrived.

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