Six Stories: A Thriller: 1

Product Information

With a unique structure, an ingenious plot and so much suspense you can’t put it down, this is the very epitome of a must-read’ Heat Elusive online journalist Scott King investigates the murder of a teenager at an outward bound centre, in the first episode of the critically acclaimed, international bestselling Six Stories series… But this is definitely a read I think any mystery lover will enjoy and highly recommend you give this a read! (or listen!)

An unusual approach in a mystery book ALWAYS gets my attention! This one is presented in a podcast-style format. OH YES. YES. I do love me a crime podcast. By the way, this book keeps referencing SERIAL, but SERIAL is kind of old news by now. Can we talk about ATLANTA MONSTER? MY FAVORITE MURDER? CRIMINAL? SWORD & SCALE? Six wives” junkies, especially Anne Boleyn fans, tend to discount Jane Seymour and declare her the most boring and the least feminist of all the wives. So Six seems to have set itself the laudable goal of pulling an Eliza Hamilton on Jane Seymour, of making the case that Jane Seymour’s status as the most traditionally feminine of Henry’s six wives does not make her deserving of our contempt. They are Fifth Harmony, sure – singing together with tight sounds and tighter choreography – but all six are also that group’s breakout star Normani: when each get their moment to take the spotlight and go solo, the audience just about loses their minds. And like Hamilton’s deep cut homages to R&B artists (and Normani’s, for that matter), they do it by remixing, referencing and shouting out the women of pop. Come for the Spice Girls easter eggs, stay for the Geensleeves ones. Long story short, Six Stories is inventive and sharply written, mysterious and creeping. If you're looking for a twist on the standard thriller format, this is where it's at. Ultimately it's a story you've seen elements of before - a dead body, people with secrets to keep, mysterious rumors, and a truth that's begging to come out. But throw in a clever format, some well plotted twists, and talented writing and it's a recipe for success.

Episodes

Living in North East England myself I found the Northumberland setting to the story very captivating and the author (who is also from the North East) is fantastic in describing Scarclaw Fell in such atmospheric detail you'd think you were standing amongst the trees, ferns, wildlife and woodland paths yourself. The characters are just brilliant and I loved how the story was told through each of the teenagers involved now they are adults. After hearing one recollection you just had to read the next, forming your own opinion and view on the tragedy that happened. Throughout King’s investigation it is never really in doubt who killed Elizabeth Barton. The evidence against her killers is overwhelming. But the questions that King wants to discover is why they killed her, and if possible, the men’s differing levels of culpability. To do this, he is soon looking into both killers and victim and discovering that not everything is what it seems. The story has always been that Elizabeth was a beautiful, popular, and kind person involved in charity work; her killers’ oddballs and loners. That Elizabeth’s killers murdered her at least in part due to jealousy (the other reason being that one of them believed her to be a vampire). But King soon finds other perspectives, that Elizabeth had secrets and that the killers were not the cardboard cut-out villains they had been portrayed. It’s a relentless & original work of modern rural noir which beguiles & unnerves in equal measure. Matt Wesolowski is a major talent’ Eva Dolan Tom was part of an informal adventure group called Rangers, comprising a handful of teenagers, some younger kids and their parents; Scott sets about interviewing the former Rangers, along with Haris Novak, an autistic man who was prime suspect at the time thanks to his familiarity with Scarclaw Fell, and Harry Saint Clement-Ramsay, who discovered Tom's body. It's through the interviews that an intriguing alternate narrative emerges. The interviewees recall tales of a 'marsh-hag' and the 'Beast of Belkeld', similar local legends about an evil presence lurking on the fell. Separately, several characters remember having glimpsed a spidery figure of unnatural height around the time of Tom's disappearance. Is the 'beast' a red herring, or an indication that this is more than just a murder mystery?

Each book in the Six Stories series reads like the transcript of a podcast, with supplementary material, such as letters and news articles, thrown in. It’s an unusual narrative style, but it works so well. I listen to a lot of podcasts, so whenever I’m reading the latest book in the series, Scott is usually voiced in my head by whatever podca At the heart of ‘Beast’ is the power and influence of the unreality that is fast becoming reality of the online world. The power of likes and subscriptions to channels, stories, vlogs, blogs etc and the lengths that individuals will go to to achieve whatever it is they are looking for from this cyber world. Is this a real world? I would suggest that it has become real in many ways as we continue to push the boundary on the definition of real.

Buried in a marsh, the body of Tom Jeffries wasn't found until a year after his disappearance, when the landowner and a couple of his mates came upon it while hunting deer (or so they say). The official ruling was 'misadventure', but questions have always swirled around why Tom went missing and how his body could have been left undiscovered for so long. The creator of Six Stories – the pseudonymous Scott King, who, thanks to the success of previous series, has become something of a celebrity while remaining largely anonymous – believes the case warrants further investigation.

Six Stories is a creepy, atmospheric, suspense filled psychological thriller fueled by unreliable memories coupled with fear, myth, and darkness. In case you’re not familiar with Six Stories: last year I wrote a review of Deity for Sublime Horror that also acts as an overview of/intro to the whole series.)King struggles with this issue, and the book isn’t necessarily looking to establish a definitive answer. This ambiguous conclusion hints at Demon being the final Six Stories case, at least for now. This being the sixth book, it would, after all, be quite neat. I’d be sad – I’ll be rereading these books forever, and if there were 150 more of them I’d happily spend a year reading nothing else – but Matt Wesolowski probably doesn’t want to write 150 of them, and I’m excited to read whatever he writes next regardless. Endlessly inventive and with literary thrills a-plenty, Matt Wesolowski is boldly carving his own uniquely dark niche in fiction’ Benjamin Myers There's a strong focus on how government cuts have affected the downtrodden community of Ergarth, and may even have had a direct hand in the murder. As always, some intriguing little threads are worked into the plot, like Jason's animal activism, and Amirah's rant about middle-class vs. working-class use of the term 'chav' (with which I wholeheartedly agree, and I'm so happy to see this perspective make it into a book, however briefly!). However, I also found some elements a bit far-fetched – that widely known and gossiped-about connections between the victim and accused wouldn't have come out in court, for example. I struggled to believe in some of the events in the climactic chapter, and was confused and troubled by the final transcript.