The Invisible Man | review by Douglas J. Ogurek

What’s worse than a stalker? An invisible stalker. 

There seems to be a trend in recent fiction and film: an attractive, financially successful male attempts to control a female. Perhaps it started with Christian Grey. B.A. Paris’s 2016 novel Behind Closed Doors spawned Jack Angel, a sadistic psychopath who makes Grey look like Mr. Rogers.

A Cold Silence by Alison Littlewood | review by Stephen Theaker

A Cold Silence (Jo Fletcher Books) is the sequel to the author's first novel, A Cold Season, reviewed in Black Static #27. At the end of that book, Cass wondered how much she should tell her son Ben about it all. It seems her decision was to keep it a secret, but years later the mysterious death of a childhood friend takes him back to Darnshaw. Visiting the apartment where she died brings back the memory of himself as a boy, sitting on the floor of an abandoned apartment, covered in rats. Jessica had been playing a gamed called Acheron immediately before her death, which can supposedly grant wishes in return for the gamer’s soul. Ben worked for the company that made that game, and his sister has been playing it too. Ben is thus persuaded to lead an expedition into the company’s London headquarters in hopes of getting to the truth: are people really selling their souls, and if so to whom?