MEAN SPIRIT. [Import] [Paperback]

Will. Kingdom (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (2001)
• ISBN-10: 0593048962
• ISBN-13: 978-0593048962
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,361,060 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A solid, good story., July 8, 2007

By 

Kimberly Dunn - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mean Spirit (Paperback)

For fans of Phil Rickman--or, indeed, of any other British/Welsh mystery with overtones of horror and suspense--this is your book. Kingdom is a talented author, sporting a style that puts you in touch with the characters immediately. As Rickman does, Kingdom makes you want to visit the Welsh border tomorrow. Read his other book if you haven't already--before you read this one. I look forward to finding out more in the lives of Grayle, Cindy, Marcus and Bobby. Bravo.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Toxic spirits, November 1, 2011

By 

Linda Pagliuco "katknit" (CT, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mean Spirit (Paperback)

Persephone Callard is a world reknowned psychic medium, but her skills did not warn her to avoid becoming entangled with sadistic criminal Gary Seward. Now she's in hiding, and is being haunted herself by the evil manifestation of Seward's most vicious "enforcer", who himself was brutally murdered. The desperate Persephone contacts her old mentor, but since he's down with the flu, he sends his assistant, journalist Grayle Underhill, to help. No sooner does Grayle set out, than the nightmare begins.

Will Kingdom is a pen name of the author better known, mainly in the U.K., as Phil Rickman. Rickman deserves a much wider American readership, because he sure knows how to write captivating, credible, paranormal novels. His Merrilee Watkins series, about a female Anglican priest who's trained in exorcism, is set along the evocative England/Wales border, as is Mean Spirit. It's difficult to decide whether Rickman's/Kingdom's strength lies in plotting or characterization, as both of those factors are always so strong. A cross-dressing TV celeb, a young cop who recently died and came back again, the publisher of a new age magazine, and an American writer can hardly be expected to meld into a crime busting team, but that's exactly what they do, by hook or by crook. The suspense ratchets up, chapter by chapter, and the final scenes in a Victorian castle's creepy cellars are positively riveting. If you're looking for quality paranormal/crime novels, you can't do better.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A paranormal sequel to "The Cold Calling", February 9, 2010

By 

E. A. Lovitt "starmoth" (Gladwin, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mean Spirit (Paperback)

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. "Mean Spirit" is a sequel to The Cold Calling and has most of the same characters as the first book--at least on the side of the righteous. Read "The Cold Calling" first if you want to make any sense out of the relationships between the police detective who was brought back from the dead, the cross-dressing shaman, and the ditzy New Age American newspaper reporter.

In "Mean Spirit," police detective Bobby Maiden is still on the trail of his bent supervisor, who has retired from the police force and is now heading up a private security force called Forcefield (think Blackwater).

Marcus Bacon, editor of a psychic newsletter, "The Phenomenologist" is now assisted by American reporter, Grayle Underhill, who has `modernized' his newsletter and increased its circulation. Grayle spends most of this novel saying the wrong thing, getting bad vibes about a world-famous medium, and (toward the latter stages) throwing up. She seems to be the author's version of `Innocents Abroad' and says `um' way too many times (do Americans really talk that way?)

My favorite character from "The Cold Calling," cross-dressing ventriloquist, Cindy Mars-Lewis has found a cushy TV job on a popular British lotto show. Unfortunately, newly rich lotto winners keep dying horribly, and the sleazy tabloids (Britain has many of them) start putting it about that Cindy has cursed them.

Although "Mean Spirit" doesn't reach quite the same pitch of paranormal intensity that its predecessor did, it does have more than its share of sadistic, devious villains, one of whom escapes during the chaotic supernatural finale. So I'm definitely hoping for a sequel.