Paperback, 432 pages
Published July 1, 2021 by Bantam Press.
A weekly newspaper dedicated to the weird and the wonderful (but mostly the weird), 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 foul-mouthed husk of a man who thinks little of the publication he edits. His staff are a ragtag group of misfits. 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 problems of her own.
When tragedy strikes in her first week on the job The Stranger Times is forced to do some serious investigating. What they discover leads to a shocking realisation: some of the stories they'd previously dismissed as nonsense are in fact terrifyingly real. Soon they come face-to-face with darker forces than they could ever have imagined.
There are some funny situations where the author manages to be extremely witty. But most of the time it is generic modern-day-fantasy stuff which won't be remembered.
Hannah is trying to restart her life after leaving a cheating husband. This means she has to find a job, even if it means working for the "The Stranger Times". The tabloid specialises in "strange" stories, but the team is about to learn that some of the stories aren't as crazy as they sound.
I bought this book because it was on sale and the reviews compared it to Terry Pratchett's writing. I don't necessarily agree with the comparison, but I loved this book and highlighted too many passages. It is filled with good dark humour, and all characters are special in their own way. Editor Banecroft is probably my favourite and I need to learn more about him. I'll read the next book for sure!
And as a final thought: we need to make obituaries instead of plain acknowledgements a thing.
