Last Orders at Harrods - An African Tale

Is there a barrier that divides the dark unknown from the everyday world around us?

If so, is it broken sometimes by the dead returning, by the undead, or by alien creatures?

What else could account for the chance meeting (or was it?) between a young student and hitch-hiker who turns out to be so much stranger than she seems? Why else should three successive crews flying a Second World War bomber - Blackham's Wimpey - be driven to madness, despair, even to death, though the plane returns from each mission without a scratch? Who are Fred, Alice and Aunty Lou; the figments of Peter's imagination that become a real life nightmare for Roger and Biddy?

There is St Austin Friars, too: a church without a congregation - until a burial service, oddly arranged a month ahead, is attended by a sinister assortment of the living and the dead. And Sergeant Nice, an ordinary policeman in an ordinary seaside town faced with a series of quite extraordinary thefts; the work surely, of no human hand.

Chilling, but often humorous as well, these stories creep up on you and take you by surprise.

In 1945 two brothers die in the icy Barents sea and a book is all that survives of them. More than sixty years later Donny and his mother set out for Suffolk to meet his mysterious great aunt. There is an accident and Donny is taken into care. But are the officials all that they seem and why won't they believe Donny's story? Soon he discovers that his life has been built on a lie. Only the new friendship he makes and an unsuspected talent for sailing help him steer his way through dangers that he cannot understand towards a knowlegde of his own identity -- and the secrets of a salt-stained book.

‘When Donny saw which boat it was, slipping stealthily up-river in this dead hour between night and day, he crouched lower and motioned to the others to do the same. Then he lay completely flat. No precaution could be too extreme. The Hispaniola had left her mooring…’

Once the mysterious red-and-white schooner is on the move Donny Walker and his family are in danger. Even crossing the North Sea may not be sufficient to save them. Meanwhile in Fujian Province, China, a 14-year-old boy must leave the Village of Living Widows and travel to England, the Country of the Ghosts. Will he survive the storm winds of summer and can Gold Dragon help him? The thrilling conclusion to the Strong Winds trilogy.

'The third flag – Anna's resplendent dragon on its rippling black background – had been slashed to tatters … What did pirates do anyway? In real life and the twenty-first century?'

In A Ravelled Flag Donny Walker and his Allies – Anna, Xanthe, Maggi and Luke – come dangerously close to finding out. Their adventures take them to semi-derelict docklands, up the deserted and beautiful River Stour and onwards to Britain's most easterly point. This is a winter story, dark and suspense-filled, a gripping sequel to The Salt-Stained Book.

Praise for The Salt-Stained Book
'One of the great adventure stories of 2011.'
The Bookbag

'Funny and exciting.'
The Times

'Moving and gripping. This is cracking stuff.'
Griff Rhys Jones

'An intense, absorbing read … get on board for a very modern adventure.'
The Evening Standard

"Dark, intense and suspense-filled action and adventure ... and a good dose of wit as well. It's a great read."
Love Reading 4 Kids

"the themes are darker but the page-turning narrative pace is just as strong"
Jibbooms and Bobstays - The Nancy Blackett trust

The second book in the Strong Winds trilogy is more enjoyable than the Salt-Stained Book as some of the first episode's nasty characters are developed as actively conspiring against our heroes.
Otago Daily Times

"With [...]ingenious plotting, suspense-filled writing and a rare warmth towards its characters it delivers its rewards."
The Marine Quarterly

A Ravelled Flag is not a simple book but I'm absolutely certain young readers will find it very rewarding[...] It's exciting and it's deep. Ransome would have loved it.
Indie e-book review (Jan Needle)

It struck him suddenly that they were boats, high-speed inflatables with plumes of water at the front and foaming fountains dragged along behind. They were packed with crouching men, with AK47s, hand grenades, and they were racing straight towards him, across a deep-green sea. He heard an enormous crash, an explosion then a scream, and smoke rolled across him for a long second. When it cleared, Jim saw someone die.

Most people think Treasure Island is a masterpiece – and not just for children or the young. Underneath its high adventure surface is a driving narrative of greed, ambition, and a ruthless desire to wallow in dead people’s money. Money that was torn from them originally by the piracy of brutal and completely heartless men.

Strangely, the people behind this single-minded search for ill-gotten wealth are usually seen as ‘the good guys’ – pillars of their society like a magistrate and doctor, and a landed gentleman. They put some money into a small fast ship, and crew her with the cheapest, most appalling dockside scum it is possible to imagine. Why? Because they know their mission is dubious, almost certainly illegal, entirely immoral. And as a figleaf, perhaps, they take along with them an innocent young boy, who has had the misfortune to find the key to all the treasure.

All this is cynical enough, perhaps. But to run such a crew of thugs and murderers, they employ a man who everybody in the port of Bristol knows is a charming, charismatic monster – Long John Silver. He alone can control them, and his most usual method is murder. The younger and more honest the victim, the more inevitable will be his death. 

That is Treasure Island as it was written, and many writers have longed to carry the great story on. Most have attempted it through sequels, but have stumbled on the fantastic subtlety of the original. They assume that the respectable men behind the venture are by definition good, the pirates by definition beyond the pale. Most of all, they fail with Long John Silver. It is a truism that he is ambiguous, but the depths of ambiguity are limitless. Jim Hawkins loves him, so he cannot, surely, be all bad? But Jim Hawkins hates him, too, and this is apparently too difficult for the modern mind.

This version then, is not a sequel. It is an attempt to re-imagine the circumstances, characters and events in the way Jan Needle re-imagined The Wind in the Willows in his earlier best-seller Wild Wood. Set in the world today, its protagonists are more akin to Somali raiders than to quaint eighteenth century men in funny clothes. The cruel struggles that scar the Caribbean now, with their drug lords, guns, rape, violence and terror are the backdrop.

There were three people, standing in the darkest place, watching him.

Simon is outraged that his Mum plans to remarry. He can't bear her new fianc� or the way his mother and sister seem to have forgotten his late father. Overwhelmed by hatred and anger he seeks solace in a nearby abandoned water mill. But another, powerful hatred lingers within its walls. And it is about to be unleashed...

Westall's immense talent is evident from the opening line - Simon's anger and unhappiness are tangible, and the Scarecrows' ill-intentions terrifying.