Mister Kreasey's Demon [Paperback]

Raymond Nickford (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 30, 2004

Heckled, often ignored and threatened by the street-hardened students who mistake gentleness for weakness in their teacher, Matt Kreasey has perhaps just one vestige of tenderness that he can still recognise in a student who is called Amy. On passing his neighbour on the steps of his apartment while visiting to bring her teacher an overdue essay...

"Kreasey wondered whether his student had appeared before his immaculately groomed neighbour, Doctor Mallaby, in her very highest heels, the ones that gave Amy an extra three-and-a-half inches of height over a world that had always seemed to look down on her. On her first visit, he'd noticed, Amy was slightly undernourished and shivering in a short skirt with a slit up the side. She'd been clutching her essay to her low-necked top and he'd wanted to tell her that she'd made him happy enough - just by appearing on his doorstep with her essay and those eyes which spoke of deprivation and held, for him, openness more beautiful in itself than any he'd seen in any student before."

But she, alone amongst his students, had tried to help him...

"She was searching his eyes, confused. He recalled better times, those moments when her face had shared that open comic side of her lovemaking with him. He so wished he could deliver her from the dross that was her peer group. Unblessed though their encounters had been, he couldn't forget that she'd tried to be his passport to those from 12d... those who always seemed to be gathering, getting closer..."

But reduced to paranoia about his students, Matt has his first doubts about her intentions, despite her intimacy with him...

" 'Well, are we going to see you in them?' she smiled, still holding his shorts out like her trophy. But as he watched her lips they seemed to shape like those in a poorly dubbed film where the voice is out of synch' with the words... reminding him now to 'eat up' all his tablets and that, then, he wouldn't need to be 'cut up'."

The acute anxiety state kicks in again, the paranoia deepening, real love seeming to be no more than a cruel deception...

"He was forty-five, Kreasey thought, middle-aged and he still needed a sixteen-year-old girl to open the bottle for him. Perhaps they were right. Perhaps he should eat up all his tablets. He was going to need the next so badly when Amy had left his bed and the night seemed as if it feared returning to morning."

Between sleeping pills, tranquilizers, flickerings of delusion and hallucination, Matt Kreasey fights to hold to him that which could be most dear - Amy Carter...

"Every tablet that huddled inside the bottle seemed to be a face - not just Jake Blacksmith's - but every shaven head and ring-in-the-nose that noisily packed out classroom 329 where he'd once had to cope...
'Long night teacher,' they seemed to chorus. 'Long is for lithe, panting tiger waitin' for you.'
Amy had slept with him but now something warm and fleshy had covered his eyes, the whole mattress had sagged deep beneath him, his body sprung with the bed... all was dark as moonless night."

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The first few chapters are atmospheric intriguing. They made me want to keep reading. The beautifully observed characters and exotic setting have all the makings of a first class novel..." -- Barbara Erskine. "The promise of the opening chapters is more than well maintained. This novel is a real page-turner. Worthy of comparison with the early John Fowles' 'The Magus' -- but distinctively Raymond Nickford..." -- Allen Synge. "An atmospheric, vibrant, almost spooky page-turner that might easily become something of a cult..." -- Reay Tannahill.

From the Inside Flap

Village teacher, Matt Kreasey, is reduced to paranoia by the street-hardened students in his new inner-city London post.

His student, Amy, lets him glimpse at love, but could she, too, be one of those gathering with the hunting knife which has already ended the life of his colleague ?

Can a paranoid stop himself from destroying she, alone, who might have shown him what enduring love could be ?

Tags
suspense, drama, mystery,  poignant, literary fiction, moving, tender, Barbara Erskine, romance, relationships, psychology, thriller

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Haunted Books (April 30, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0954696328
• ISBN-13: 978-0954696320
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Raymond Nickford has said that to him, people are stranger than fiction and in many ways more fascinating. Perhaps this is what first led him to his degree in Philosophy and Psychology from the University College of North Wales and which has subsequently driven him to produce his searching character studies in his collected stories Twists in The Tale, and novels and contributions to anthologies in the USA.

Souls particularly troubled ones, including the outsider, the lonely and any driven to extremity, have been indispensable for his paperback novels, now available in amazon.co.uk KINDLE E-books including: Aristo's Family, Mister Kreasey's Demon and Twists in the Tale .

Of his novel based in Cyprus, Aristo's Family, BARBARA ERSKINE, best selling author of Lady of Hay has commented on the beautifully observed characters, intriguing and atmospheric scenes and, above all, the suspense which made her want to read on.

His favourite producer is ALFRED HITCHCOCK, and he admires the authors Patricia Highsmith, Ian McEwan, Ruth Rendell and Henry James. Raymond is a member of The Society of Authors.

He believes his teaching of English in colleges and as a private tutor visiting pupils from what he describes as shacks to mansions, and meeting the absolutely delightful to the vaguely Little Lord Fauntleroy, has informed his new literary thriller A Child from the Wishing Well.

This new title will also be published in Kindle in August and, as with the above book titles, is already available to buy as an Epub-book from smashwords.com.

It features an eerie music tutor, her young pupil Rosie and Rosie's paranoid and inept father, Gerard, who nevertheless yearns to mean more to his daughter.

The book was selected for the Harper Collins Gold Star Award, May 2010.

Candace Bowen, author of A Knight of Silence, has written of A Child from the Wishing Well : Growing up in a suburb of Chicago, the first scary movie I remember seeing was the 1965 Bette Davis movie, The Nanny. To this day, that movie has always stuck with me as one of the great psychological thrillers of all time. For me, A Child from the Wishing Well, by Raymond Nickford, is reminiscent of that movie. Ruth, the eerie music tutor, and Gerard strap you in, and take you on a psychological thrill-ride to the very end.

Raymond confesses to a passion for plump, docile tabbies and says he is moved by the music and life of the composer Edward Elgar, his interest leading him each year to a cottage in the Malvern Hills and to the Three Choirs Festival. He is a member of the Elgar Society.

The author is currently working on another psychological, Prey to Her Madonna. Here, all he will say is that the intrigue moves between Madeira, an eerie French shrine, an English village and London.  

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A gem of a plot for a dollar, January 26, 2012

By 

Alice E (Bangor, Maine) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Mister Kreasey's Demon (Kindle Edition)

Sensitive and kind to a giant of a simpleton in his class, Kreasey nevertheless gradually crumbles under the pressure of his street-hardened inner-London students who prefer to be mixed up with petty crime on the side walks rather than listening to his talk on the metaphysical poets. Enter, Amy, a colorful character and the one person sympathetic to her teacher. Kreasey comes to see Amy as his 'passport' to the guys he thinks are gathering to harm him. Their growing affection for each other is strained to the utmost by Kreasey's growing paranoia and the question at the heart of this novel is whether love and light can triumph over mental illness and moments of complete darkness for the village teacher thrown into the hard-hitting metropolis.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A teacher with a difference - and a living nightmare, November 24, 2011

By 

Josh Summers - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mister Kreasey's Demon (Kindle Edition)

College days for me were in Greater London and I know what students from deprived homes can sometimes do to a college teacher if they don't like sitting in a chair and hearing about "The metaphysical poets" which is what Matt Kreasey has to get into their streetwise heads. He's much too sensitive, almost quaint, for his inner-city roughies and they soon run over him like a steam roller leaving him a nervous wreck. Maybe a familiar story so far but I reckon this book stands out for the way it sees into its characters from both sides of the desk and shows you how wrong you can be about many of the assumptions you can make - either as teacher or a student. Plus, the painful and strained romance between Kreasey and his young and poor student, Amy, is full of feelings you might never dream of flowering when you think of the run down and depressing streets where the students come from.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For those who want to bite off the ends of their fingernails while getting some very raw character observation, this is a book t, November 24, 2011

By 

Arabella Kendall - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mister Kreasey's Demon (Paperback)

Matt Kreasey's humiliation at the hands of his streetwise London students conjured up for me the sheer rawness and edge which Nickford seems to achieve when he's observing his characters and, in this book, we have teenage students taking a sensitive paranoid teacher apart like a pack of wolves. When you expect that Matt would be reduced to hatred of those that taunt and threaten him, you still see a side of him which is, like many of Nickford's characters in his other novels, really tender.

Matt becomes fascinated by his young student, Amy, who in turn sees in him, not just an older man and her teacher, but the vulnerability of a man who it's true to say is a 'gentle' man. The interest might have ended here but the way Nickford explores the relationship leaves no compromise with false sentiment, nothing Mills and Boon, just honest emotion that really drew me into the story from the start.

Amy becomes Kreasey's 'passport' to the toughies who resent his closeness to her. Teachers are to be ground down to a pulp if they dare, like him, to give a lesson on 'Marvel and the Metaphysical poets' or try to bridge the gap between village teacher and some of the malcontents among inner-London backstreet students. But Amy brings to his flat more than her overdue essay and Nickford's observation of the relationship between a poor teenage girl from a deprived background, trying to help him cope with increasing paranoia, and a middle-class teacher from a quiet village, is masterfully done.

In places, I thought the tension almost too sustained. You need moments of calm, even if it's mental calm in a narrative to relieve the tension but for those who want to bite off the ends of their fingernails while getting some very raw character observation, this is a book to be swallowed whole.

The tension is ratcheted up as, just when you think Matt and Amy, teacher and student, are going to get through the ordeal, Kreasey's paranoia darkens his feelings for her and makes him wonder whether she, too, could be one of those voices he hears as he revisits the corridors of the empty college buildings at night to try to come to terms with the demons that keep him on Diazepam.

The night-time scenes in the dimmed and empty classrooms lit only by the glow of an orange neon lamp from the street outside and the taunting 'appearances' of chief bully 'Thickneck' and his sycophants let us right into the mind of a paranoid and I thought this is so well done that it's as chilling as the threat of the hunting knife that's coming for Kreasey.

What made me read to the end was to find out whether Kreasey would survive - not so much the knife or the collective beating - but his demons and, most of all, the one chance at love that could elude him.

Twists in the Tale (Psychological Suspense, the Supernatural and Ghosts S.)