Customer Reviews

The Cold Calling

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Like all of Phil Rickman's books ( writing here as Will Kingdom) this book had me up reading all night.Set on the Welsh Borders, it is very atmospheric and also full of suspense. Highly reccomended.

Will Kingdom (aka the very talented Phil Rickman) has turned out a ripping yarn set in the mysterious Welsh borderlands.
With a cast of well-drawn characters, including the debut of jaded copper Bobby Maiden, readers can expect more of the witty, realistic dialogue that has become Rickman's hallmark.
A serial killer is on the loose and the body count is climbing. But these are no simple murders, with overtones of the supernatural guiding the killer's hand.
Atmospheric and entertaining, The Cold Calling will leave you thoroughly chilled and thrilled. Stirred, and definitely shaken!

Phil Rickman writing as Will Kingdom uses the same Welsh border background as he does in his Merrily Watkins mysteries, but his hero is a policeman rather than a parish priest. The supernatural elements in "The Cold Calling" are more `real' than they are in the Merrily Watkins novels, where the bogeymen are usually demystified at book's end (at least, most of them are.)

A serial killer who calls himself `The Green Man' is sacrificing victims at various British Stone Age sites, in an effort to purify the Earth. Police don't realize that the murders are being committed by the same man because a different weapon is used each time. When a self-styled shaman (who is also a cross-dressing ventriloquist) tries to clue them in, they toss him out on his ear.

In a second story line, a hit-and-run accident victim is brought back to life by an ER nurse, after flat-lining for four minutes. The revived victim is a police detective who has been investigating links between his chief and the local drug lord. By all rights, he should be brain-damaged, but he isn't--at least not in the usual sense of the term.

The third story line involves the feud between a TV archeologist, who investigates Stone Age sites for his show, and a retired teacher, who believes that the megalith near his village has sacred healing power.

Even though there are many characters and subplots to remember, the author defines each one so vividly, I had no trouble keeping track of what was happening. The only character who didn't really come alive for me was a spacey New Age journalist from New York, who travels to the Welsh borderlands in search for her missing anthropologist-sister.

As with all of Phil Rickman's supernatural mystery novels, I couldn't tear myself away from "The Cold Calling" until I had read straight through its 494 pages to the chilling climax.

Phil Rickman (writing as Will Kingdom) is a marvellous writer. He treats the supernatural very apropriately as part of life, & develops wonderful plots.

He has a strong sense of place, the Welsh border country almost a character in the book, so strongly is it evoked.

This book is a sit-up-all-night-till-finished one. You won't be able to put it down, & the various characters are well thought out. You really care what happens to them.

Bobby Maiden, a policeman, has special insights into a serial killer after almost dying. The story evolves in a way you won't guess, & the prehistory of the area is involved.

For intelligent horror & suspense, you won't do better than "The Cold Calling."