Wednesday 25 October 2017

Lytefoot by Phillip D Curwood; a review by Diana Milne

The author, Phillip D Curwood, is not just giving away one copy of  a book, he has made his first book Arabella: A picture of Beauty free from today, 25th October, until midnight on the 27th.
Thank you, Phillip, for this wonderful gesture.

Please contact Phillip to discover how to get your copy!





By genre, this novella is classed as a ghost story or paranormal but it easily could fit into chiller, thriller, horror and for sheer tension for the reader, would sit proudly amongst peers in the psychological thriller genre...

Whilst it works well as a stand alone story, it is the follow on to Phillip D Curwood's previous story, Arabella: A Picture of Beauty, which introduces Nathan Rothwell, a famous crime fiction writer back in the '80s, whose hedonistic lifestyle spiralled him into a near breakdown after the death of his parents and his subsequent obsession for a beauty painted by John Constable, which turns his life upside down and sees him fall in love with her 200-year-old ghost until their lives are once more torn apart by vengeance, and murder.

In Lytefoot we meet the same team of ghosthunters that we met in Arabella  and once more Rothwell enters the story. To absolve himself of his guilt, Rothwell had recorded an admission on a smartphone before his death of what really took place the night his sister and Lytefoot Hall’s estate manager were murdered and his obsessive love for the ghost of the beautiful heiress, Lady Arabella Lytefoot, plus his struggle coming to terms with a dark entity, so twisted by rage that he could reach out and harm those in the material world...

The characters are all finely drawn and vivid, with realistic strengths and weaknesses and a believable and fast flowing dialogue holds the story together. The story is fast paced, one shock following on from another (and I am never sure whether it was me who was more shocked or the four ghost hunting protagonists!) and suddenly the host hunting quartet of Steve, Sarah, Rob (Robo) and Nigel find themselves in the middle of a scenario that they almost find is too big and too terrifying for them to handle and making them all confront parts of their past they thought they had left behind.

The author skillfully blends the past with modern technology to create an acute sense of chilling normality in the absurd and and chilling paranormal, mixing fact and fiction and sheer terror to thrill and chill and stop you from sleeping at night as you ponder 'what if...?' dragging us, the reader further and further into the maelstrom that is Lytefoot.

The author's own experience of the paranormal, couple with what must have been a serious amount of research into the subject, lead us, occasionally white knuckled and trembling, to the final well described and intense conclusion.

About Phillip D Curwood:



Born in the East Midlands, in 1962, the author, Phillip.D.Curwood had a working class upbringing. All his life he had wanted to be a writer, but as is usual, life got in the way of those dreams. It wasn't until 2013 that he started laying down ideas, that would eventually become the supernatural romance - Arabella: A Picture of Beauty. He says, "Being a writer has taught me a lot about myself, and the people around me. It's got to be the best job in the world!" The 54-year-old author lives in Derbyshire with wife, daughter, and cat in tow.

As a keen amateur historian, rambler, and lover of classic ghost stories, Phillip.D.Curwood gained his inspiration for Arabella from a portrait he stumbled across at the Newstead Abbey museum a few years ago; one of a beautiful 17th century heiress that still hangs there in the Great Hall. The fictional Lytefoot hall she resides in the story, is in reality the ruinous Annesley hall in North Nottinghamshire. Coupled with his love for East Anglia, the author set about creating his romantic debut novel, set in a fictional geographical region, on the wilds of the Suffolk coast... hoping that by end of the very last page, he shall have the reader reaching for their hanky...

Read more about Phillip Curwood here at Diana Talks to Phillip D Curwood. It is worth it!!

© Diana Milne October 2017

No comments:

Post a Comment