I really wanted to like this book, as we are all certainly living in ‘Stranger Times’, however, after trying for a month, I’m still stuck in the first half of the novel. The characters are very cartoonish and although there have been some very intriguing magical parts, I really don’t care about the fate of the protagonists. Not for me, sorry.

Awesome fun! The concept as a whole isn’t the most original, but the frame of the paper helps give it a coat of polish and make it sparkle. The protagonist is a delight.

This book was unexpected and delightful. I love the off-beat premise and the distinctive characters. I'll always be grateful for authors who add a touch of the fantastical to our normal world. Excellent work, and thank you for the ARC!

The Stranger Times by C.K. McDonnell (Bantam, 2021) reads a bit like a Terry Pratchett book transposed into a present-day setting. I loved the concept, but the execution did not work for me. The humour was too crude and there were a lot of discriminatory jokes. I feel like the setting of a newspaper focusing on the weird and supernatural could have offered itself to far better stories, but the characters frustrated me to no end and I couldn’t get over some of the comments that were made. Added to that was that the plot just tried to do everything, rather than focus on one direction and do it properly. I don’t recommend this one.

The Stranger Times is a weekly newspaper dedicated to reporting on the the weird and supernatural occurrences of modern life. Hannah’s first week on the job as assistant editor reveals the staff of the paper to be a group of misfits serving under a foul-tempered, foul-mouthed drunkard – not what she had in mind for her first proper job. When tragedy strikes rather close to home, the team at The Stranger Times is forced to do some serious investigative journalism which leads to the shocking discovery that some of the supposed nonsense that they report on is actually real.

This was a highly entertaining read with a group of fantastic characters. Hannah is a surprisingly relatable protagonist who goes through some subtle and very well-done character development over the course of the book, while the rest of the team at The Stranger Times are completely lovable and barking mad – even Banecroft, the offensive and abusive editor. They’re a colourful bunch, each with a past that is eluded to but never fully explored, which goes a long way to give them depth without changing the focus of the story.

Speaking of which, the story is the perfect mix of kooky and amusing, and dark and gritty. In amongst the general silliness of Banecroft literally shooting himself in the foot and ‘Loon Day’, when the paper opens it’s door to the public to try to sell their largely unbelievable stories to be published, there is a much darker story unfolding.

The plot is fast-paced and entertaining throughout, but I felt that things happened in a bit of a rush at the end, with the climax and conclusion coming on a bit abruptly. There were also quite a few unresolved threads but, as the first book in a series, this can be forgiven as they will probably come up in more detail in later installments.

Good-vs-evil, alternate chapters, a world kind of similar to our own...but not...

I adore a well mixed cocktail of fantasy, sci-fi and myth, with a splash of good humour (hold the sugar). And it's all set in good old Manchester! This was a fun read, with some nice creepy elements and a great story arc for the relatable MC Hannah Willis and her varied cast of fun (and mean) side characters. I understand this is book 1 and book 2 will be fresh of the press (pun intended) sometime later this year (maybe?). I'll definitely be reading it!

This is by far the weirdest, funniest and entertaining book I have ever read. British humour for which I have a weakness, but set in America which is about as off-Britain as it can get for a former colony of the crown; the probably most uncaring boss ever - I still wonder how he has managed remaining editor, but I guess no one wants the job? - I was not expecting this book to make laugh so hard, especially since it's having some serious thriller elements as well. But it did and I really wish I could give this book five stars, but the newspaper articles were completely disrupted by the Kindle app, making it impossible to read them. That's why I am cutting a star, while hoping the next book will be as humerous and entertaining as this one.

I received a free ARC by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I absolutely loved this book and it was exactly the tonic I needed to get me through these crappy Corona times! I've been a fan of the authors other books (writing as Caimh McDonnell) and was intrigued as to how he'd turn his hand to an urban fantasy...well he turned it right well! Such a laugh out loud book with a host of BONKERS characters who I know I'll grow to love as much as those from the Dublin Trilogy/Bunny Stateside. Personal favourites are Manny and Simon; the moments they are featured were jaw-dropping and so endearing.

I'm so pleased that there are going to be more in this series and can't wait to find out what's next for the staff of The Stranger Times!

I enjoyed this story as I have enjoyed this author's other books. There's a silliness to them, but heart too.

The Stranger Times is a comedic urban fantasy book that centers around the “news” reported by a small newspaper in Manchester. The eponymous newspaper, the Stranger Times, focuses on stories that some may call “fanciful”, “ridiculous”, or “a load of bollocks”. UFO abductions, haunted toilets, werewolf sightings… they’re all here.

Much of the story in this series-starter revolves around a young woman named Hannah, a one-time toff who is now slumming it following an un-amicable divorce. Searching for a new job — and, if we’re being honest, something to do with herself — she stumbles into an interview for our new favourite newspaper. The editor, one Vincent Banecroft, is a manchild of the well-worn British sitcom variety. Abrasive, coarse, and at least casually racist, he’s at the center of most of the jokes this book tries to make.

So that’s the background. The story goes pretty much exactly where you’d expect it to from there. Magic is real — gasp! — and our unfortunate characters have no idea. Doubly unfortunate is that someone who is basically an evil wizard is waltzing around Manchester killing and abducting people.

Look. It’s hard to review or critique something that’s supposed to be funny. Humour is subjective, you’d be surprised to hear. But there’s also an element of where to draw the line between judging a comedic book as a story, and judging it by how it made you laugh or smile. Books like Kings of the Wyld get praise from some readers (me included) for the laughs and nostalgia they bring. Others may think there’s too much silliness and not enough structure. There’s a balance there, but the thing is that the balancing point is different for every person.

For me, I’d say The Stranger Times is more Kings of the Wyld than it is Bloody Rose. I thought it leaned on its jokes quite heavily in some spaces, and relied on the tropes of the genre to get it from point A to point B. It read like a story I’d seen before a hundred times, but with different characters and different specifics. Which isn’t a bad thing in and of itself. There’s nothing wrong with tropey fiction. But such stories do depend on the strength of those specifics and characters.

Personally… I don’t think I connected with them all too well. At least not entirely. There were some aspects that I enjoyed, like the found family aspect as Hannah settled into life with her new co-workers, or the healing aspect as Banecroft showed glimpses of the man he could be. One or two of the jokes and character interactions made me smile. But others made me wince.

There are a few places in The Stranger Times where racism or homophobia are played for laughs. The bigoted comments are always made by antagonistic characters — and I’m including the loud-mouthed Banecroft in that, as he’s a very antagonistic protagonist — and they’re almost always called out or made to pay for these (sometimes quite loaded) remarks. On a few occasions, though, it’s the calling out that’s set up as the punchline.

To give an example of what I mean, the most obvious of these is when Banecroft refers to an employee he has worked with for a significant period of time as “the Chinese one”. When accused of being racist, he bats the conversation over to the aforementioned employee, who says, “I am. I’m proper Chinese, me”, thus setting up the accuser as the punchline.

On another occasion, the main antagonist assures a woman at a bar that he could rape her if he wanted to. He doesn’t want to. But he could. Y’know, to show that he’s an arsehole, but not quite a rapey arsehole.

I don’t think I’m the person to pass judgement on the above points, but I highlight them so that you have a more informed view and can make your own decisions regarding the book.

Outside of what I’ve already mentioned, the humour is mostly of the silly and slapstick variety. Loud characters, identifiable mostly via their individual quirks, thrust into ridiculous situations with a focus on the absurd. The story didn’t really do much to set it apart from any other comic or urban fantasies for me, but then I usually think that the first books in such series are often the weakest.

The Stranger Times is like Mick Herron’s Slough House meets Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London via a BBC sitcom office in Manchester. While I had my issues with it, I’m disappointed that I didn’t love it as much as I wanted to.

The premise of Caimh McDonnell’s novel caught my attention because as a teenager I discovered a UK magazine called The Fortean Times, which reported on ‘weird news’ (and still does as far as I know) and went to great trouble and expense to have it imported by my local newsagent for a year or two.

“Publication seeks desperate human being with capability to form sentences, using the English language. No imbeciles, optimists or Simons need apply.”

Similarly, the titular ‘The Stranger Times’ is a weekly newspaper devoted to the weird and wonderful. When Hannah Willis, newly separated and desperate, answers an ad for a position at The Stranger Times she has no idea what it may entail, but she is not expecting to find a man threatening to throw himself off the roof, a wannabe reporter named Simon lurking by the entrance, and then for her new boss, Vince Bancroft, to set fire to his office and shoot himself in the foot during her interview. Still, Hannah needs a job and this is the only one on offer.

“We aren’t reporting the story as fact; we’re reporting the existence of the story as fact.”

Though Hannah doesn’t believe in the litany of the strange and unbelievable that The Stranger Times reports on that’s all about to change when, after Simon is found dead at the base of a construction tower, the staff of The Stranger Times becomes the target of a killer, who has a vicious beast at his command.

“Because, sweetheart, you ain’t never met a short-arsed slaphead quite like me.”

The Stranger Times is an entertaining urban fantasy novel. Set in Manchester, McDonnell introduces a shadow world that lurks amongst ours, where folk hide in plain sight. One of these folk has gone rogue, breaking a centuries old Accord, and the staff of The Stranger Times gets in the way of his plans for murder and mayhem. But no matter what happens, the paper still needs to go out.

The staff of The Stranger Times are an eccentric bunch, editor Vince Bancroft is a barely functioning alcoholic in a permanent bad temper, flatmates Ox and Reggie are feature writers, specialists in the supernatural and extraterrestrial, Stella is a teenage runaway, and pious Grace is the paper’s office manager. I loved their unique personality’s, and their group dynamic which is delightfully dysfunctional.

Though it gets off to a bit of a slow start I was quickly caught up in this witty, weird and wonderful romp full of magic, mystery and monsters. Read all about it in The Stranger Times!

The Stranger Times collects stories of the weird and wonderful from around the world. But when ones of its wannabe reporters stumbles on something truly supernatural, the newspaper and its whole staff are pulled into investigating not only paranoid mumblings of the local lunatics, but the very paranormal stand-off between Good, Evil and something inbetween.

We're brought into the story thanks to Hannah (I always find it strange seeing a name-sake in a book!), who has only her second ever job interview at the paper. It quickly turns out that there's a good reason for that, as she is escaping a marriage from a wealthy, philandering husband. Hannah is, in theory, our voice of reason, to bring the reader into the story.

But instead of an office of journalistic professionals, she finds a motherly office manager, drunk and swearing editor, bumbling but well-meaning journalists, and a sulky girl in the corner. It's delightful havoc to meet all of these characters who, as an ensemble, are hilarious.

And instead of serious reporting and editing, Hannah finds herself having to have showdowns with the editor, listen to answerphone messages of delightful mundane paranormal insanity and take notes from the monthly line-up of the local crazies.

The actual investigation, first into the murder of a homeless man and then into a young hopeful reporter, seems to trundle along next to the characters. It's not something they are actively investigating, because they don't know enough to investigate. Instead they are stumbling into situations, with the main events of the story taking place right at the end, rather than burning all the way through.

Overall, these are all things that I can cope with, however, and seems to match with other things that I've read in the same urban fantasy, first-book-in-a-series genre.

There were some things that crossed the line from banter into snark and further on into ... I wouldn't call it racism, but conscious stereotyping instead? The cast is diverse, if you list them all out, but the way their characters are presented are anything but. For example, there's a trippy Rastafarian style character with white locks who runs the printer in the basement whilst getting high. The Black Office Manager literally mothers everyone. And there are a few times (tongue-in-cheek calling out someone's race, accidentally 'assuming' that one character is another's daughter because they are both Black and live together). I get that these instances are added in order to call out one character for being rude and obnoxious, another for an 'easy mistake to make'. But is there really any need for it? Particularly when it's just used to snub-nose political correctness?

The same goes for the villain - his nastiness is portrayed through inhumane and ignorant and abusive actions. And a whole lot of pantomime soliloquy-ing at the end. That's a Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 1 villain, not a proper one.

It meant that, although I enjoyed the story, there were too many things that grated on me. It felt like the author was aiming for edgy Pratchett and just missing the mark for today's audience.

I'd like to think that these were first novel in a series mistakes, but were they really necessary?

Thank you to NetGalley for approving me for an ARC in exchange for review.
A very well written Urban Fantasy, with a surreal style/aesthetic and a dry sense of humour, and a cast of characters that are quirky but nuanced enough to stop them from becoming caricatures. A nice extra feature is the inclusion of snippets of stories from the newspaper itself. Finishes with the potential for more.
Might not be the book for me right now but I would still recommend if you like urban or humorous fantasy.

Here is my 5⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review of The Stranger Times by C.K. McDonnell.

You know you've really enjoyed a book when you get to the end and hope that it is the first in a series. This book is about The Stranger Times newspaper, a paper that reports on the wierd and wacky news from around the world, possessed toilets, haunted pets, alien abductions etc. Hannah gets a job as the deputy editor and discovers the employees and the boss are all strange and eccentric characters themselves. Within days of her starting there are 2 suspicious deaths. As the team investigate they begin to realise some of the wierd and wacky stories may have some truth to them.
I adored the lively, interesting characters, who made me laugh out loud at times. The story line was brilliant and I honestly can't wait for the next one (which according to the appendix will be out later this year).

The Stranger Times by C.K McDonnell is about a newspaper full of weird and wonderful stories from the public.  Think UFOs, ghosts, and of course, Elvis.

Hannah Willis is running away from her life, and manages to get the job as the Assistant Editor.  It's a role that's seen more than a few people, and now is Hannah's.  She gets to deal with the drunk and rude editor, which looked to be hard even before forces of darkness start to intrude.  Perhaps the things they write about aren't all fantastic tales.

This is a fantasy romp and one that I enjoyed.  I liked the back stories of all the people who work at the paper, the mystical elements that are added, and the twists and turns the story takes!

 The Stranger Times by C.K McDonnell  was published on 14th January 2021, and is available from  Amazon ,  Waterstones  and  Bookshop.org .

You can follow C.K McDonnell on  Twitter .

I was given this book in exchange for an unbiased review, so my thanks to NetGalley and to  Transworld Books .

‘The Stranger Times’ is a debut comedy-fantasy by Caimh McDonnell, an Irish stand up comedian. The premise is excellent – a divorcee seeking a job to pay the bills accidentally ends up working for Manchester’s leading newspaper of the paranormal (or at least, what people claim to be the paranormal). The urban fantasy elements are solid, but unfortunately the comedy isn’t my cup of tea.

Hannah Willis is desperate. After finally divorcing her serial cheater of an ex-husband – and accidentally burning down his house in the process – she needs a job, any job, to pay the bills. After a series of failed interviews, she finally responds to an ad she isn’t entirely sure is real:

“Publication seeks desperate human being with capability to form sentences, using the English language. No imbeciles, optimists or Simons need apply”

Suddenly she finds herself the assistant editor of ‘The Stranger Times’, a newspaper of the world’s weird and wonderful – from a parrot that its owner claims is the reincarnation of Elvis Presley to a haunted toilet in Scotland. She’s not sure what’s weirder – the paper’s subject matter or her new colleagues. However, when tragedy strikes, she finds out that the paper’s subject matter might have a grain of truth after all -and everyone at ‘The Stranger Times’ is in the firing line.

Hannah has great potential as a protagonist. A woman who’s gone from being a trophy wife in Knightsbridge to living in a spare room in Manchester, her entire life has fallen to pieces – and that’s without bringing the secret existence of the paranormal into it. However, whilst the novel is told through her eyes, she’s never developed as fully as she could be. She’s more used as a piece of normality amongst the strangeness of everything else in the book than as a fully-fledged character of her own. She’s likeable enough without being particularly memorable.

The other employees of ‘The Stranger Times’ are far more interesting – especially Banecroft, the paper’s editor who was once a famed media mogul and ended up at ‘The Stranger Times’ after a public mental breakdown, and Manny, a secretive man who runs the printing press. Banecroft initially comes across as incredibly unlikeable, but whilst he’d be an awful boss he becomes far more endearing as the story progresses. Manny plays a relatively small part but is an absolute sweetheart with a clearly fascinating backstory.

The plot is solid – the adventures of the employees of a paper about the paranormal – with some great twists and turns. Where it falls down is the humour. The approach is slapstick and over-the-top, making all the characters unnecessarily caricaturic. As the plot progresses, and starts to become a more conventional urban fantasy rather than a comedy, the novel improves – but the lack of subtetly at the start is hard to recover from. Those who like their humour brash and juvenile may love the approach McDonnell takes, but those who are more fond of biting sarcasm and clever quips will probably struggle with it.

My other big issue is with the dialogue. This isn’t a particularly fast-paced book – there’s a slow introduction to all the main characters before the plot takes off at all, and once it does there are regular interruptions – but it’s slowed to a turgid pace at times by the dialogue. Several of the characters are clearly intended to be very proper, which is shown by the omission of abbreviated words during speech – were not instead of weren’t, it is instead of it’s. I can see why McDonnell has chosen to do this, but it makes simple sentences take an awfully long time and feels very stilted. It says a lot that in a book featuring haunted toilets, the way characters speak is sometimes the least believable part.

Overall, I’m sure that some people will love this book, but unfortunately it isn’t the book for me.

As a former staff member of one of the most recognisable newspapers in my corner of the world, I was delighted to see "The Stranger Times" hitting the shelves of NetGalley. Thanks for the ARC, guys!

The book "combines [C.K. McDonnell's] distinctive dark wit with his love of the weird and wonderful to deliver a joyous celebration of how truth really can be stranger than fiction", and the blurb immediately caught my attention:
"There are Dark Forces at work in our world (and in Manchester in particular) and so thank God The Stranger Times is on hand to report them. A weekly newspaper dedicated to the weird and the wonderful (but more often the weird) of modern life, it is the go-to publication for the unexplained and inexplicable.
At least that's their pitch. The reality is rather less auspicious. Their editor is a drunken, foul-tempered and -mouthed husk of a man who thinks little (and believes less) of the publication he edits, while his staff are a ragtag group of wastrels and misfits, each with their own secrets to hide and axes to grind. And as for the assistant editor . . . well, that job is a revolving door – and it has just revolved to reveal Hannah Willis, who's got her own set of problems.
It's when tragedy strikes in Hannah's first week on the job that The Stranger Times is forced to do some serious, proper, actual investigative journalism. What they discover leads them to a shocking realisation: that some of the stories they'd previously dismissed as nonsense are in fact terrifyingly, gruesomely real. Soon they come face-to-face with darker foes than they could ever have imagined. It's one thing reporting on the unexplained and paranormal but it's quite another being dragged into the battle between the forces of Good and Evil."

We meet the cast of characters through the eyes of Hannah Willis. Following a divorce, she finds herself in a desperate need of a job. Quite by chance, and as if by the will of a wizard, fate decided she would answer to this ad: "Publication seeks desperate human being with capability to form sentences, using the English language. No imbeciles, optimists or Simons need apply…".

After a less-than-usual interview, Hannah joins the motley crew of the newspaper. Office manager Grace keeps the place running on threats, tea, and careful selection of biscuits. Reggie threatens to throw himself out of the window. Young Stella was given a choice between being arrested for breaking into the newspaper’s headquarters and entering the payroll. Nearly-naked Manny operates the printing press in the basement. Ex-Fleet Street editor Vincent holds tight grip on his staff as well as the bottle.
Admittedly, I was not fond of Vincent at all. I could find hardly any redeeming quality of the man in charge, and yet, to my surprise, he became the one I respected the most by the time the book was over.
Also, special mention to my favourite figure: DI Sturgess, a detective the paper deserved. Poor chap…

All the characters make The Stranger Times's Machester such a vivid place. And there is a one determined Simon.

The narrative is written in fluent sass - I laughed a lot! Sometimes it was the wit and sarcasm, and sometimes the situational humour, like Hannah's first Loon Day, when the paper invites readers to share their insane experiences, unbelievable stories, and tips on alien neighbours.

When I finished reading The Stranger Times, it left me wanting more. And to my delight, I found out that it is the first book in the series! As such, most of the narrative time is spent establishing the cast and the setting. I hope that next instalments have more action while maintaining the same level of humour and weirdness.

Overall, the book is part mystery, fantasy, thriller, supernatural, and suspense. It has a bit of everything leading to the fundamental battle of good vs evil.
I've read a few opinions that McDonnell leans heavily on archetypes, and the story lacks creativity. For example, the Accords or the monster's motivations could have been borrowed from a lot of urban fantasies. From where I stand, many books contain elements that were heavily inspired by previously published works. If they are used smartly and sparingly, they don't affect my enjoyment.
However, the most significant bit of criticism is related to the final boss battle. It left me longing for more action, more danger, or highest stakes. I was expecting more from, and for, the monster.

Overall this is a fun and enjoyable read, full of humour that is so desperately needed. I look forward to the next one!

Editorial note: the interstitials - newspaper clippings inserted throughout the book - were an exquisite touch adding to the story's overall feel. However, the e-ARC had some problems displaying them correctly.

The Stranger Times is a weekly newspaper dedicated to all the weird and wonderful, unexplained and downright bizarre stories that the mainstream newspapers don't want to publish.  They are facing dire straits though:- their editor is a drunk, their assistant editor left and none of her replacements have stuck it out, and the rest of the office is a ragtag bunch.  When Hannah Willis takes on the assistant editor's role she has no idea what she's getting into, and the shocks just keep coming as her first week progresses and the stories the paper publishes are revealed to be more real than any of them ever thought.

Another great read to kick off the year - I'm on a roll!

I've not read anything by C.K. McDonnell before, but based off this one I'd say he could well become a go to author for me.  This book was easy to read, very entertaining and darkly funny.

The cast of characters are a real odd bunch, that you wouldn't expect to find together, but they work really well.  They are all loveable in their own ways, even the perpetually angry Banecroft.  I particularly liked that the characters began to open up more as the book progressed, just like getting to know someone in real life.

The first few chapters were a bit jumpy, introducing us to different aspects of the story and not necessarily explaining how everything was linked, but things became clear as I read on.  The book moves at a nice pace, and has plenty going on.  Probably my favourite thing about it is that although we began to piece together the paranormal world, there is still plenty left unexplained for both the reader and the characters.  More than enough to warrant several more books!

I thought this hit the perfect balance of weird, fantastical, funny and generally not taking itself too seriously.  I'm very pleased to know there will be a sequel.

Thanks to NetGalley, Random House UK and Transpired Publishers for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

I initially requested this book on the description and when I realised that it was the author Caimh McDonnell I was over the moon that I had a chance to read his new book. So a preface to this review is I loved his previous two series set in Ireland and have recently just finished reading them. This series has the same wit and laugh out loud situations but with a paranormal storyline.

Hannah has recently found herself, divorced, skint and at a crossroads in her life. She somehow manages to find herself a job at the newspaper The 'Stranger Times'. This newspaper seems to be filled with oddballs and misfits but all with strangely intriguing personalities. There is then a tragedy which has to be investigated and a whole world of weird and magical things start to happen.

The novel was a joy to read from start to finish. It engages you with the characters and is anything but predictable so it feels like you are along for the ride with them. I really did enjoy that there isn't just one main character who you are following, its all of them, each with their own individual personality and story.

I really hope this is another series of books as I would love to follow the stories of the characters and read more about the magical world I got a glimpse of.

Is there a subgenre called "cosy urban fantasy"? If not, there ought to be. Not that The Stranger Times pulls its punches, oh no, we see some gruesome deaths here and evil is rather on the march, but still, there is that same combination of a strong sense of place and a slight twist of the absurd which I enjoy in cosy crime, an assurance perhaps that while there's a mystery to be solved and a decided threat, other things are also important, or more important: office banter, for example, and getting the latest edition of The Stranger Times to press, and pursuing a good story.

First, though, there's the little matter of a job interview... as this book opens, Hannah is desperate for a job. Accustomed to a life of upper middle class luxury, she's alone, in unfamiliar Manchester, without money or friends, for the first time in her life and desperate enough - just - to seek employment with the eponymous paper, which glories in the weirder side of life: UFOs, hauntings, conspiracy theories and the like. ('Nessie is the Father of my Child'). Presided over by Vincent Banecroft, a former hotshot Fleet Street editor fallen on hard times who now looks 'like his own corpse waiting two happen') The Stranger Times has ethics of a sort: nobody pretends to believe in the outré goings-on that feature in the paper (well, not all of them - some of the staff believe in ghosts, others in UFOs) but there's an integrity in the way that it recognises and reports things that are being claimed to have happened.

Nobody expects to wade into a supernatural crisis and indeed, for a considerable time they don't release that the disappearance of a down-and-out man and the bodies in the morgue with strange wounds have anything to do with each other. McDonnell allows the setting and personnel of the paper plenty of time to establish themselves (truly, the staff of the paper - Hannah, Grace, Reggie, Ox and Stella - are stranger than anything it reports...) while in parallel, telling us about a couple of villains who reflect the darker side of things and are clearly Up To Something. While the grotesquerie at the paper was entertaining and I enjoyed seeing the interplay between, for example, Grace, the fiercely Christian receptionist and drunken, foul-mouthed Banecroft, this first third perhaps felt a little slow at times - most of the action was with the villains. However it does mean that when things really begin to move along, with the team from the paper fully in the firing line, we really care what happens to them.

I won't say too much about the background to that, except that The Stranger Times does follow the template of there being a "hidden" paranormal world that lives in tension with the mundane world - there's a balance that has to be kept and it is, of course, in danger of being upset. McDonnell does, however, bring a real freshness to the concept. The Stranger Times isn't about rivalries between clans of monsters or about humans being drawn into their worlds, rather its's about individual motivations, greed and ambition and survival and the willingness to exploit others in pursuit of those things.

And, as I said, about the importance of getting the paper to press, come werewolves, police or rogue sorcerers. Also, about integrity, whether in that mission to report what is being said, or in the desire of DI Sturgess to give the dead their due by investigating every case meticulously, even the hopeless ones; or in Grace's fierce love for tearaway Stella who broke into the paper's offices one night and has stayed ever since.

The group at the heart of the novel are eccentric, bickering and plain odd, but they have a fierce loyalty to one another which gives this novel real heart and soul. Combined with some sharp writing ('Mason himself seemed oblivious to his own halitoxicity', 'Coppers often dealt with people who were having the worst days of their lives. That deserved somebody's best') and a good sense of rainy Manchester ('predicting it was beyond the capacity of meteorological science') that makes for thoroughly readable and completely enjoyable story.

Here's hoping we meet Hannah, Vincent and company again, and soon.