Children’s book reviews: Everyone's a potential suspect in series of gruesome murders

As we approach Halloween Pet O’Connell rounds up a selection of the latest children’s books from a horror film-themed murder story to one featuring a lost ghost and some timely tales of witches

Cork film-maker and author of ‘Tuesdays are Just as Bad’, Cethan Leahy, positively revels in mirroring over-the-top slasher movie clichés, building suspense at the creak of every floorboard in his novel, ‘Dead Teenager Movie’.

Dead Teenager Movie by Cethan Leahy (Little Island, €11.99)

A series of gruesome murders has Cork in its grip, and with the killer still at large, everyone is a potential suspect.

What do serial killers look like, April ponders. Could it be that man with sweat-dampened hair and crumpled collar, sitting across the road in a lime-green car?

“She imagined him in his one-bedroom apartment, living above an unsuspecting old lady, with a wall dedicated to newspaper-clipping photos of past and future victims and notes scrawled in manic-looking lettering.” Spoiler: It’s not him.

April, however, doesn’t imagine any harm could come from getting into a car with young people of her own age whom she barely knows, to spend a night in an empty old house in the wilds of West Cork

Her parents, she surmises, might take a different view. 

“Even without a killer on the loose, they would not have approved of her going on a night away with a carload of strangers just for the possibility of canoodling with a boy she’d met at the debs last week.”

Carl, in her opinion, is worth the risk, even if his friend group comprises entitled rich kids with attitude issues.

A horror-movie addict, April views the world through a cinematic lens yet still wittingly walks herself into danger, while every reader’s mind screams ‘don’t do it’.

Her obsession with scary films does, however, allow her to predict what will happen next and equip her with survival skills that prove handy when it becomes clear that the teenagers are being hunted by a would-be killer who is right outside the house.

Whoever is outside, or perhaps now inside the house, causes a serious injury to one of the group members and makes it clear that murder is their next move. 

Things escalate quickly when the teenagers’ phones mysteriously lose reception, and just as April points out that if this was a horror movie their car would be sabotaged to prevent their escape, the car is indeed sabotaged, preventing their escape.

Next come the masked maniac and the bloodletting, and if this is beginning to look a lot like a slasher movie in literary form, the fact that the chapter headings pay homage to horror films such as Prom Night, Alone in the Dark, and Stay Alive really seals the deal.

The questions then, if the drama is following a film script, are: Who is directing the gruesome action and who will become the ‘final girl’ left to tell the tale after the other characters have been picked off one by one?

They are questions April is able to raise too, since this multi-perspective chiller is so self-aware as to allow its characters to appraise the parts they are playing in the action.

Cork film-maker and author of Tuesdays are Just as Bad, Cethan Leahy, positively revels in mirroring over-the-top slasher movie clichés, building suspense at the creak of every floorboard.

There’s blood and gore galore, making this a book best avoided by the squeamish, as the level of violence, if taken seriously, would be truly disturbing.

Yet Leahy uses minimal graphic detail and the nonchalance with which the characters approach the possibility of their imminent grisly demise makes this young adult novel more Scooby-Doo than Friday the 13th.

A superfluous sub-plot and editing slips aside, Dead Teenager Movie succeeds in keeping readers hooked by delivering non-stop action while paying a tongue-in-cheek tribute to retro horror.

Nowhere for A Ghost to Sleep by Erika McGann and Clive McFarland (O’Brien Press, €10.99)

A restless spirit in every sense, Little Ghost can’t find a place to have a quiet snooze.

The exhausted spook attempts to get a bit of shut-eye in houses, barns, and even chimneys, but everyone is afraid of ghosts and refuses to let her in.

In despair, she drifts into a graveyard, where she spies what appears to be a fluffy cloud and snuggles down for a nap.

Though she is mistaken about her new-found bed being a cloud, Little Ghost finds in the graveyard kindred spirits who accept her as she is, giving her a sense of belonging and providing a happy ending to this rhyming picture book.

They Called Us Witch by Ellen Ryan (Harper Fire, €19.99)

Enslaved on a Haitian coffee plantation, Cécile Fatiman grew up without access to education and with a burning desire to fight for freedom.

She had no weapons or battle training, but her mother advised her that there are other ways to resist enslavement.

Cécile learned skills from a mambo, or mother of magic, a priestess of the Vodou faith with the power to heal and a connection to ancient spirits.

That spiritual connection subsequently allowed Cécile to channel the anger of her people and at a Vodou ceremony, inspire a rebel uprising that lit the spark for the Haitian Revolution.

In Ireland, bean feasa Biddy Early was brought before court to be tried for witchcraft, but despite persistent rumours about her use of magic, the people of Clare queued at her door in search of cures.

Never requesting money for her acts of healing, she tended during the Famine to those who could not afford doctors’ fees, and resisted the attempts of police, priests, and landlords to curtail her activities.

These stories are among 10 retold by Wicklow’s Ellen Ryan, author of Girls Who Slay Monsters, in a collection illustrated by Imogen Oh and Anastasia Stefurak, which shines new light on women around the world who were branded as witches, often by those who feared their wisdom and power.

Aggie Witchfinder by Sarah Hannah Walsh (O’Brien Press, €10.99)

Meanwhile … it seems witchfinders are back in business, Puritan-style capotain hats and all, and are on the prowl in Irish children’s picture books.

Tradition has it that witches are among the characters of whom we should be very afraid, especially at Halloween, when their powers are strongest.

Some might say, however, that witchfinders were infinitely more scary than most of the poor women forced by them to confess to performing ‘magic’.

So the subject of Galway author-illustrator Sarah Hannah Walsh’s debut children’s book comes as something as a surprise, until it becomes clear that ‘Daddy Witchfinder’, with his Pilgrim headwear and bright blue head, is actually a bit of a softie.

He is taking his young daughter Aggie, dressed in pink pointy hat, into the forest for her very first witch search.

Aggie is certain her Daddy is the most wonderful witchfinder of them all, despite the fact that no witch has been found for a very long time.

When he sets a series of witch traps and tests, the only one detected is Aggie herself.

Could the best witch have been hiding in plain sight all along?