What a start to my new year reading list!
Conversations with Spirits is the debut novel of E O Higgins and it is an absolute hoot! Set in 1917 England and at the behest of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Trelawney Hart, the hard-drinking, chain-smoking anti-hero, starts out on a journey to uncover the truth behind recent stories of a medium who is gaining a strong reputation as a genuine psychic. Hart is a sceptic and believes in logic and materialism, so the thought of uncovering a fraud is intriguing to him. As he progresses, however, he finds his beliefs challenged and his logic failing to assist him. Along with his side-kick, Billy, he finds himself on a rollicking adventure that leads him to question his truth.
This book is completely absorbing and one of the few I have read recently that I wanted to devour in one bite and savour at the same time, so it didn't end too quickly. It is so entertaining and the characters are such great company, that I wanted to share more adventures with them. As a result, I dropped a note to Mr Higgins who assures me he is hard at work on another Trelawney Hart adventure, which is wonderful news!
Another thing that is completely brilliant about this book is that it came to be published through crowd-funding via Unbound.co.uk. For those of you who haven't heard of Unbound before, it is an online platform which allows authors to pitch their book idea and readers to support the idea by making various size donations. When the book reaches it's target, it gets published and the reader/donator gets various benefits, including copies of the book and many other things. This platform enables authors to bring books to the public that they may struggle to get published commercially, especially if they are working on a debut novel and do not have back list to support them. How fabulous is that! For more information take a look at www.unbound.co.uk.
As for Conversations with Spirits, I loved the book, cannot wait for the next yarn and am so delighted to have found this author. (Thank you to my lovely sister, Samantha, who sent me this book for Christmas and told me about Unbound).
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