This ghost story tells about a one-time bomber pilot who is now an antique dealer and keeps getting involved with ghosts. While this is his first book for adults, he has been writing ghost stories for young adult readers such as "The Machine Gunners".
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
British author Westall wrote The Machine Gunners and other prize novels for young readers that appeal equally to adults. Conjured up here are seven haunting tales spiced by his wry humor and based on characters so real that they compel belief in the eldritch events described. The narrator of all of the stories is Geoff Ashden, a dealer in antiques since the end of WW II, when he was an RAF squadron leader. Geoff, thinking of those times long past, is amazed to chance upon "The Dumble dore," a cafe supposedly closed 16 years earlier. There, British and Yank pilots had gathered as comrades and courted the pretty bar maid, Charlene, although she loved only her American hero, Tex. The end of the romance makes the story an admirable shocker, flawed only because Westall places the Fall River legend in the 1920s: Lizzie Borden "took her axe" in 1892. Overall, the collection rates high marks for originality and variety. There are tales of a malign spirit in a church, of another in Geoff's own house, and more: the worst of the haunts escaping from the antiques left by their evil owners to menace the living.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A masterly homage to the short stories of M.R. James.,
This review is from: Antique Dust: Ghost Stories (Hardcover)
English author Robert Westall is probably best known for his excellent children's books, many of which have supernatural themes. With "Antique Dust," the author sets out deliberately, and largely successfully, to replicate the mood and quality of M.R. James' ghost stories. Several of Westall's stories are linked by a protagonist who is a dealer in antiques, a reasonable facsimile of the scholarly collectors who populate such wonderful James chillers as "The Mezzotint," "Canon Alberic's Scrapbook," and "Casting the Runes." Despite the relatively modern settings of his stories, Westall somehow captures James' rare ability to juxtapose "real life" and rather humdrum pursuits with the excitingly obscure world of paranormal beings. "Antique Dust" is a superb read for those who appreciate the pleasant shiver provided by the traditional English ghost story-an art which, sadly, is dying away amid the current rage for unsettling epics about sadistic serial killers, flesh-melting viruses, and inevitably gory apocalypse.
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