Six Stories: A Thriller: 1

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Now – about 10 years ago I stumbled on a documentary called Capturing the Friedmans. And that one really was Is that enough to make audiences overlook the utter mess Six makes of its attempts at feminism? Judging by the rapturous reception among my fellow theatergoers at Saturday’s press preview, the answer is likely yes. But I found myself just as bothered by Six’s messiness in 2021 as I was in 2020, and if anything time has made me more vengeful. I’m more dazzled by the spectacle now than I was then, but less inclined to forgive the disarray. The fourth is "Lunch at the Gotham Café." A little better and has violence and gore. Again, a man's wife leaves him and they meet at a NYC restaurant to discuss her grievances with her therapist as a mediator. All goes haywire when a looney Maitre'D goes psycho with a butcher knife. Was this planned by his soon to be ex? Well, so there is a lot of precedent for fictional investigation of crime through a patchwork quilt of interviews – this was also what Truman Capote did in In Cold Blood and Norman Mailer in The Executioner’s Song – both brilliantly. Plus IT'S 99 CENTS! I got it for free, but I would have happily spent a dollar on it. Matter of fact, I'll probably go for the sequel too.

Another year, another episode in the absolutely brilliant Six Stories series. If you’re not reading this series, I’m judging you like you wouldn’t believe. And if this fourth book in the series doesn’t get under your skin and make you think about the truly warped-up world we live in these days, there is something really wrong with you.Howard tries to communicate with the doctors multiple times but to no avail. Every time it seems that Howard has a chance, it’s ripped away. It’s a rollercoaster of a story, but not in a scary sense, it’s more frustrating than anything. The way King chose to end the story is so original, it was never expected. I thoroughly enjoyed this short, dark tale about “Howard the Conqueror”. Matt Wesolowski crafts his story with descriptors imbued with a deep physical sense. You seem to hear the crunch underfoot and experience the rawness of the swampy woodland that holds a death knell for the abandoned mine shafts hidden in the choke of winding growth. Six Stories is written in the form of a true crime podcast and I just love the concept! I listen to podcasts all the time though they’re mostly horror than true crime. I thought the framing of the mystery in the form of podcast interviews lends a raw, chaotic feeling to the story. This was a tremendously compelling book, full of suspense and twists. While I might have had some suspicions about how things would unfold, Wesolowski really kept me guessing, and kept me hooked as if I were listening to one of his podcasts. The story is a little creepy, a little sad, a little frustrating, and a little confusing—just like life itself.

Interspersed with the six podcast episodes you also get to see the research that Scott has done on the case and snippets of Elizabeth and her YouTube channel too. Scarclaw, where even in the daylight there is darkness; where monsters and sprites may be lurking in the marshes; where some ghosts never die; where In 1996, fifteen year old Tom Jeffries went missing; where his body was found a year later in the nearby marshland. Disturbing, compelling and atmospheric, it will terrify and enthral you in equal measure’ M W Craven Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums. On March 12, 2020, the giddy new pop musical Six — about the six wives of Henry VIII, reimagined as a glam pop-ballad-belting girl group — was set to open on Broadway in a transfer from London. Then, just hours before curtain, Broadway shut its doors. By the time Six reopened for rehearsal in August 2021, all the jewel-toned plastic-and-foil costumes had deteriorated so much that they had to be rebuilt.

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But this is definitely a read I think any mystery lover will enjoy and highly recommend you give this a read! (or listen!) Well, I probably should for the benefit of those of you who haven’t (yet) read the series. Six Stories follows investigative journalist Scott King, who hosts a true crime podcast named – yep, you guessed it – Six Stories. Each six part series of the podcast focuses on a different case and in each episode, Scott interviews a different person connected to it, allowing it to be seen from six unique perspectives. All of which is more or less true. Yet after making this critique of itself, Six then proceeds to do nothing with it. What really did happen the night Jeffries disappeared, and why did it take a year for his body to surface? Was someone supposedly innocent actually guilty, or was there a supernatural force at play? Can our memories, our interpretations of events which occurred so long ago, particularly when we were young, be trusted, or is everything open to manipulation? Can the person who weaves the threads of the stories together be trusted either?

Enter elusive investigative journalist Scott King, whose podcast examinations of complicated cases have rivalled the success of Serial, with his concealed identity making him a cult internet figure. In a series of six interviews, King attempts to work out how the dynamics of a group of idle teenagers conspired with the sinister legends surrounding the fell to result in Jeffries’ mysterious death. And who’s to blame… In the wake of the 'Beast from the East' cold snap that ravaged the UK in 2018, a grisly discovery was made in a ruin on the Northumbrian coast. Twenty-four-year-old vlogger, Elizabeth Barton, had been barricaded inside what locals refer to as 'The Vampire Tower', where she was later found frozen to death. Six is not interested in treating the trauma the queens each suffered as real and meaningful, not when there are fun bops to be made out of it. Six is not interested in telling its audience anything about the lives of the six wives of Henry VIII beyond the details of their marriages, not when their marriages were so dramatic and exciting. Six Stories is a series that just keeps getting better and better. This arrived just before Christmas and I immediately wanted to dive in. Vampires and legends in Northumberland? Yes please? A vlogger found in a pele tower? A youngsters prank gone wrong? The blurb says the book will look at our obsession with needing attention on social media so there's the modern angle. Old folklore mixed with modern day life? Bring it on. Holds on to breaches and rolls from heal to toes* Well, what do we have here? Another chilling Wesolowski rollercoaster, that's what we have. How does he do it? It's an unbelievable talent it is, through the use of his words Matt executes an unsettling read that entwines aspects of societal issues with the snowy covering of horrifying warpness! Through multi-narration, including that of Scott King and six individual's close to the victim in question - YouTube channel host, Elizabeth Barton, as well as segments of this channel, an eerie deathly journey has been created, a cold case has been drawn out of the shadows and investigated with the use of a podcast format. Personally, for me, the format in which Matt pens his novels is something uniquely special, it merges both my love for podcasts, crime and reading. Another reason why I absolutely love the creative format in which Matt writes, is that each 'episode' introduces a new character, that allows the story to unfold that little bit more with their own independent voices. This is a read that I also can't wait for in Audible - it'll be superb, I just know it!The story coursed the imaginary boundary between real and supernatural well, I was left in a swirling maze from where I knew not whom to believe in. A truly compelling read, giving the other side of social media and its fake world, the writing captivated me and brought out a weird craving that I need more of this author's books. Readers of Kathleen Barber’s Are You Sleeping and fans of Ruth Ware will enjoy this slim but compelling novel’ Booklist To be fair, Jane is starting with a handicap. Historically, she is the hardest queen to get a handle on. She seems to have had a fairly quiet, shadowy personality, and while Henry’s other wives are famous for their dramatic disobedience and/or powerhouse intellects, Jane Seymour was compliant, obedient, and uninterested in scholarship. She died shortly after giving birth to Edward, Henry’s only legitimate son, and because she provided him with a male heir, Henry always claimed that she was the only wife of his that he truly loved. (He never bothered to give her a coronation, though, so all that consideration for her appears to have developed only after she died.) The setting and the sense of place that you get whilst reading Beast is tremendous and you are transported to the rundown coastal town of Ergarth. Ergarth is a claustrophobic small town where Tankerville Tower ‘The Vampire Tower’ a decaying monolith on the outskirts casts a forbidding shadow over the whole town. It is an area that has been forgotten by the government with no money and no jobs available. It is a place where life has been drained, leeched away, bleak and drab where the colour is muted and has turned to grey. It is a community where everyone knows each other and where gossip and rumours are rife. It is a town with history, the Ergarth Vampire a story that has been passed down through the centuries and from one generation to the next. I’m also curious about the protagonist himself. Not many details were shared about the aftermath of Book 3. I mean, surely there would have been a huge fallout given what a big mystery the case was and how it was resolved? Not to mention the possible implications of how everything was executed?