The Book Zone: Coming Up in 2011 #10: CRYPT: The Gallows Curse by Andrew Hammond

Monday 18 April 2011

Coming Up in 2011 #10: CRYPT: The Gallows Curse by Andrew Hammond

Some of you may remember that earlier this year I ran a feature titled "Coming Up in 2011", where authors with new stand alone or first-in-series books due out this year wrote a short piece about their book. The original plan was to only run this feature during January, but when I saw mention of this book on Twitter I couldn't resist from resurrecting it. I rattled off a quick email to Maura at Headline Books and within days debut author Andrew Hammond had very kindly written the following about his new CRYPT series, due out in September:

Sometimes crimes are committed and there's no rational explanation. When atrocities occur but there's no evidence of human involvement who do the police turn to? Welcome to the CRYPT, a secretive branch of MI5 established to investigate the paranormal. The Covert Response Youth Paranormal Team is an undercover agency of teenage ghost hunters. Why undercover? Because you mention the word 'ghosts' and you can spread fear across a whole city - and ghosts feed off human fear. Why teenagers? Because that's when our extrasensory perception is at its peak. CRYPT agents don’t just sense ghosts, they can hear them, see them and read their emotions, to understand why they're back, wreaking havoc. Jud Lester is the star agent and his caseload includes the most gruesome crimes imaginable. Of course, he's not scared. But you will be. It terrified me and I wrote the series. Gallows Curse is the first in five CRYPT stories, each one set in a major world city. And as Jud finds, together with his fellow agent, Bex De Verre, beneath the glamour of the world’s most famous cities, often lies a murky, brutal history of crime and punishment. No wonder the ghosts are back for revenge…

Maura mentioned on Twitter that she thought that this might be right up my street, and based on that 'pitch' by Andrew I would be inclined to agree completely - roll on September!