Out of His Mind [Import] [Hardcover]

Stephen & Brian Clemens (introduction) Gallagher (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: PS Publishing (2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1902880986
• ISBN-13: 978-1902880983
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,183,398 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Novelist, screenwriter and director, born in Salford, Lancashire and specialising in contemporary suspense.

STEPHEN GALLAGHER was described by The Independent as "the finest British writer of bestselling popular fiction since le Carré ... Gallagher, like le Carré, is a novelist whose themes seem to reflect something of the essence of our times, and a novelist whose skill lies in embedding those themes in accessible plots." According to Arena magazine, "Gallagher has quietly become Britain's finest popular novelist, working a dark seam between horror and the psychological thriller."

The Daily Telegraph wrote, "Since Valley of Lights, he has been refining his own brand of psycho-thriller, with a discomforting knack of charting mental disintegration and a razor-sharp sense of place." Charles de Lint wrote in Mystery Scene magazine, "Gallagher is a master of abnormal psychology and he just gets better and better." Also in Mystery Scene David Mathew added, "never a writer to rest on his laurels, he has written good hard thrillers, some horror genre work (such as Valley of Lights), and a novel (Oktober) that might even qualify as a vague distortion of contemporary world fantasy... in places. You might go as far as to employ that overused phrase sui generis. He is, at any rate, one of the best writers of his generation."

Winner of British Fantasy and International Horror Guild awards, Stephen Gallagher's screen work began with Doctor Who and includes miniseries adaptations of his novels Chimera and Oktober, which he also directed. He created and wrote for both the British and American versions of Eleventh Hour, which starred Patrick Stewart in the UK and Rufus Sewell in Jerry Bruckheimer's CBS remake. His most recent novel is The Kingdom of Bones and his next will be The Suicide Hour, both from Random House.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Be Out of Your Mind Not to Read Gallagher, February 14, 2010

By 

James N Simpson (Gold Coast, QLD Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Out of His Mind (Hardcover)

Twenty one short stories from the mind of Stephen Gallagher, plus a real account of his interaction with a ghost, even though he still doesn't believe in them. A nice endnotes section gives a bit of trivia on each of the stories, tells the readers which novels he was writing at the time of each, which novels were set in the same place and other bits of trivia like this.

I originally discovered Gallagher when reading Magpie (which is also the first story in Out of His Mind), in Final Shadows. I have tracked down a couple of his novels since then which were pretty good but I really wanted to read some of his other short stories to see if the quality of Magpie was a one off, or if he could consistently produce that quality. There are a few stories in here that come close to the level of Magpie but overall, although still good, many are not quite in the same league. I also thought the overall quality started to diminish in the second half of the volume. The first half I would have rated five stars, the second three, so that's why overall it's four. These are the stories -

1) Magpie - Bully getting their comeuppance tale. An overweight school boy is constantly bullied and the dreaded cross country race is fast approaching. He has the intelligence Malcolm in the Middle style to get out of running in it, but doesn't foresee he can't get out of being part of it all together.

2) Not Here, Not Now - Man speeding through a school zone has no where to pull off the road due to mothers parking with their hazards on along the yellow lines, and chooses to run down a young girl who is being pulled across the street by her jaywalking mother rather than risk crashing into a truck which is on the wrong side of the road due another deadbeat parent double parked in its lane. He justifies he has done nothing wrong and it is the girl and the other parents' fault so keeps driving. Was justice done or will it catch up with him?

3) By the River, Fountainbleau - Historic piece where two French artists against their families' wishes are travelling the countryside sketching and painting what they come across. They reach a dead end of a track they've been following for quite some time to find an isolated farmhouse with hillbillies (or whatever the French version is). Because one of them finds a girl there to be extremely attractive he decides to stay while his friend returns to Paris but the father of the stayer will not continue his allowance so the friend must go back and retrieve him only to discover he is obsessed with the girl and doesn't want to leave.

4) Driving Force - Car thief steals a prototype car that fans of the novel Christine by Stephen King will appreciate.

5) The Visitors' Book - Family rent a holiday home and discover a page in the visitor book has been removed. The father doesn't care at first, but what might have been on that page plays on his mind. Sometimes there's things you should just mind your on business about.

6) Little Angels - A man who has just lost a leg and whose health will deteriorate further visits the Alps for one last look (Jungfraujoch probably, although it is never called anything). Also on the train are two little brats who constantly make fun of their grandmother.

7) The Drain - An excellent childhood bonding story that fans of The Body (renamed Stand By Me on film) by Stephen King will want to read. Three eleven year old boys find a hole in the fence of a condemned park where earlier another boy had found in the lake an active mine from the war days, taken it home and subsequently perished. Playground legend has always told that the fountain in the middle of the park's flame is made of solid gold. The boys plan to steal it and escape their lives of poverty forever.

8) Old Red Shoes - Girl gets a job in the part of London Jack the Ripper used to hang out in his day. She comes across some old red shoes at work that don't seem to belong to anyone. She throws them away but they keep coming back.

9) The Horn - Three drivers are forced to abandon their vehicles in a blizzard. Each stumble upon a small road maintenance work shed. The only heat they can get is from the small gas stove but the gas is running out.

10) Modus Operandi - Policeman visits rich home burglary victims who look down their nose at him and aren't impressed he isn't turning the house into a CSI type crime scene. He knows they are also exaggerating the items that have been stolen for their insurance claim. Their young son watches the policeman in utter fascination.

11) The Jigsaw Girl - A man finds an old jigsaw in a flea market, doesn't buy it, then it dawns on him it is the same one an 8 year old girl with no friends from his childhood invited him to come and put together. He didn't want to be seen with her so didn't turn up. She sobbed hysterically as he watched hidden in the bushes. He becomes obsessed with finding the jigsaw.

12) Fancy That - A man drives past, brakes and reverses to a driveway after seeing a sign stating Fancy Rats for Sale. Upon seeing the sign he thinks a rat will make an ideal Christmas present for his Lucy, since he hasn't got around to getting her anything yet and is running out of time.

13) Life Line - A man lends money to his deadbeat friend who does nothing with his life. His broke friend refuses to stop renting a phone as he believes his ex girlfriend will ring and get back together with him. Problem is she's been dead for some time.

14) Like Shadows in the Dark - Two Russians with stolen passports try and sneak across the border into Finland on a train so they can eventually start a new life in England.

15) No Life for Me, Without You, Vodyanoi - Loser English man picks up a hot Eastern European girl at a rest stop and gives her the key to his apartment as she had no money and nowhere to go. When he returns from his business travels he finds she has been and gone. She leaves him a photograph of her and a message on his answering machine saying "Don't try to find me." Of course he has to try.

16) God's Bright Little Engine - Upherself woman asks Handy Andy, the mentally challenged man who lives in the flat below her to fix her leaky pipes knowing he has a crush on her and even if she offers him money will refuse it. In the days after she keeps discovering other things in the apartment working perfectly when they hadn't when she used them hours before and left the apartment for work.

17) O'Virginia - Couple of kids in a poor suburb like hanging out at the travelling carnival that comes to a vacant lot a couple of times a year. They are too young to be allowed into anything and dream of getting inside the Freak Show to see the advertised parts of the stars.

18) The Sluice - A disused mortuary (sluice), is inside a run down soon to closed house for the mentally challenged. There, a resident named Martin has it finally sink into his mind that his mother is dead and won't be visiting him by a staff member sick of him going on about her upcoming visit.

19) Poisoned - Dylan's parents don't like him leaving their sight, let alone wander from the posh part of the town down to the park by the council estate where he likes to play with the poor kids. He longs to be able to make friends but his friends are never good enough for his parents.

20) Casey, Where He Lies - Man who works for a record label hears the end of song's studio talking clearly for the first time when an old record is transferred to compact disc. When he first started with the company while still at uni, he got a job in deliveries for his deadbeat friend Casey. Casey lied to a girl about his role in the company and promised to get them both into a recording session with a popular band. Of course he expected his friend to arrange this which wasn't possible, so when Casey took matters into his own hands he was fired. Casey then murdered the girl after she realised he was all talk and dumped him, he then killed himself. The voices on the album couldn't be them, but they sound just like them?

21) In Gethsemene - A travelling double act, first man a sceptic of the second. First uses trickery in his act which he acknowledges and reveals to the crowd as part of his act. The second claims to be able to contact the dead. The first is determined to expose the other as a fraud.

22) Afterword In There - True account of an experience with a ghost by Gallagher even though he still doesn't believe in them.

5.0 out of 5 stars Must Read!, January 5, 2012

By 

Shakesmom - See all my reviews

This review is from: Out of his Mind (Kindle Edition)

WOW! Stephen King, Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury...and joining those elite in my library of horror is Stephen Gallagher. I've read thousands of stories in my 41 years, and have been waiting anxiously most of that time for an author to step up and ( pardon my French) grab me by the balls enough so that I could add his name to the hallowed halls of my imagination held by the aforementioned greats. I've read lots of good stories but - until now, thank you God!! - no viscerally GREAT stories. Keep your eye on this guy, he's gonna be huge. As for me, I'm grabbing everything he's ever published to date ASAP, and will continue to read whatever he writes hot off the presses. P.S. "Driving Force" gives "Christine" a run for its money. More car stories, Mr. Gallagher!