Johnny and the Dead

I’ve never read a Terry Pratchett book before. So many books, so little time, I suppose. But this was a birthday present, so I started reading and now... I’ve just added a new must-read author to my list. (And that’s on top of all Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone mysteries that I inherited from a neighbour thinning down her bookshelves!)

Is there even any point in me trying to convince anyone to pick up this book? It would be a little like trying to sell someone Monty Python or JK Rowling. I think all I need to do is say that this story of 12-year-old Johnny – who can see and converse with the dead in his local cemetery – has a nicely unpredictable plot. In Peter Jackson’s film The Frighteners, Michael J Fox could also see the dead, but they stayed where they were. Here… not so much.

It’s very funny: “Bigmac suddenly had the hunted look of one who has never quite seen eye to eye with the constabulary.” It’s touching:
Getting medals for being there [WW1] was right, too. Sometimes being there was all you could do.” And the passage in which the ghosts of a Pals’ Battalion come from their graves in France to escort a just-deceased old soldier home with them is going to stay with me forever.

I’ve finally read a Terry Pratchett book. It will not be the last.

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