Reading a series of books (however few there are since in this case there are only 2) out of order is never a good idea - sadly a lesson I seem to have not learnt yet as I have just finished the first book of Thomas Usher AFTER I had read Dead bad thing earlier in the year.The story is still as gritty and gruesome as the first (okay second book but I read it first) but more importantly it explains a lot of what happened in Dead bad things and the familiarity of certain characters. Don't get me w...

27/2 - Can this live up to the hype that I've heard going around about it? I haven't read or heard any praise, or criticism, just a lot of excited hype. According to Ramsey Campbell (who the hell is Ramsey Campbell), on the back of the book, Gary McMahon is "one of our darkest - which is to say brightest stars - stars in the firmament of horror fiction." We'll see...Also this is my first ever buddy read (not counting being told to read up to chapter 'whatever' in the class book of the semester f...

Ok, I must be weird- both this book and its sequel "Dead Bad Things" got good reviews from readers on Goodreads- but to me they sucked so bad. This reads like Sarah Palin wrote it. Like she read a pile of Clive Barker and Stephen King and said 'okie dokey I can do that'- and sat down and penned this. I can see her now, in her "writing Barbie" outfit, tongue poked out in concentration as she pecks the keys one at a time. Her editor was way, way too scared of the crazy lady to dare to edit it at A...

Thomas Usher can see and commune with the dead, except those he wants to see most of all, that is the ghosts of his wife and child killed in a car crash some years before.He uses his abilities to pay his way in life, and, as a result, comes into contact with some decidedly dodgy characters, which is how he comes to be investigating the death of the daughter of a local 'businessman'. I really enjoyed this clash of the realms of the dead with the realism of a gritty northern setting and found the

I read Pretty Little Dead Things with shivers down my spine. It’s that kind of book: Gary McMahon creates suspense and no small amount of dread as he introduces us to Thomas Usher, a sometime private investigator who sees dead people. Usher becomes mixed up in a series of grisly murders that all point to something much more sinister going down (yes, more sinister than murder). And he isn’t the only one who is slinging supernatural power. A malevolent being from another dimension has discovered U...

Solid effort. McMahon isn't afraid to go to weird places! Felt like it could have been edited down in length. Oherwise, I'm impressed with my first novel-length read by McMahon.

This is the story of a man hired to find a killer by one [unsavoury] individual and discover the truth behind a missing girl's disappearance by another [sympathetic] individual. And yet it is so much more. Usher is tortured. Since surviving the road accident that stole him of his wife and daughter, the makeshift Private Eye has been able to see ghosts; thumbprints of those whose spirits are tortured by their passing. Feeling a duty to the dead and bereaved, he takes it upon himself to ease their...

This started as an interesting story about a man who sees dead people. For the first half of the book I would have rated it a 4 despite the overwhelming amount of description; why use one adjective when you can use 3 or 4. But it went downhill from there. I’m actually sorry I bothered finishing this book. The last 30 % of the book descends into an Hieronymus Bosch-like world, with gruesome descriptions of mutilated bodies and supernatural horrors.The end goes beyond my ability to suspend disbeli...

Different, that's what I would call this book. Its started off promising, but then ghosts, spirits etc came into it! ( Not that I am against any of that, but come on!)Some of it was interesting and believable, but a lot was too far fetched to make it a part of the story. The title drew me to this book. I should of took it literally!!!!!!!!!!!!!

During the last year, I’ve enjoyed watching Gary McMahon rise from a champion of the small press to the big leagues, and his lastest mass market release perfectly demonstrates why this is so. This novel is a very tight combination of noir, horror and character drama.In Pretty Little Dead Things, we meet Thomas Usher, a man who loses his wife and young child in a traffic accident, but develops a supernatural talent to keep him busy through the years of bitter grief. He can see the recently deceas...

Pretty Little Dead Things is the debut novel from Angry Robot's Gary McMahon and the first in a series of books featuring Thomas Usher, a sort of sleuth who can communicate with the dead. Thomas Usher doesn't truly converse with the dead but rather he can sense their story and from this he is able to figure out their messages from the cryptic clues that they give him.Thomas Usher is a tortured soul. He lost his wife and young daughter in a car crash and since waking up in the hospital, he finds

I wanted to like this and in some ways there is plenty to like, but it just felt as though it took forever to get down to the essentials. It is grim and gritty, and Gary McMahon succeeds in creating a disturbing scenario for events to unfold, but there is a lot of padding within these pages. Not a bad book, but it had the potential to be better than it was.

It's another super-glum novel from Mr. McMahon. Fifteen years ago, Thomas Usher lost his wife and daughter in a car crash for which he feels partially responsible. Ever since then, he has been able to see ghosts, so he occasionally works as a kind of exorcist who helps the spirits move on to wherever they are supposed to go. At the beginning of this story, he's operating as a detective when the girl he's tailing is murdered. This book started out fair, but irked me more and more as I progressed....

Thomas Usher can see ghosts and it’s his job to try and find out their stories. Having lost his wife and child some years before, he’s hardened to life and when the girl he’s been hired to follow winds up dead, he digs a little too deeply and finds out things that would best be left undiscovered. A cool, dark, downbeat horror-thriller, this is the first of two Usher novels that McMahon will publish through Angry Robot books and it’s a killer. From the painful, poignant relationship between Usher...

Thomas Usher sees dead people – the bigger problem is that worse things can see him...Thomas Usher is a tortured soul, weighed down with guilt after the death of his wife and child following a car accident which left them dead and him with the ability to see dead people.I wanted to read his book because I was curious to find out how Thomas Usher compared to John Connolly’s Charlie Parker with similar circumstances.There are strong similarities in the characters and their situations but that is w...

This was really rather creepy. Thomas Usher lost his wife and daughter in a car accident and from then on could see ghosts and other paranormal creatures. He helps the police with cases and also works for individuals. In this novel he's investigating the murder of young women which seems to link to a missing 9 year old girl. I liked that this wasn't set in London. Or Manchester which seems to be the choice for any author wanting to move out of the capital. The MT worked society's fear of hoodie

It felt like the chapters were written separately, not in order and then slapped together. Timelines would jump around with no clear marking, there were conflicting references. Story wasn't strong enough to handle these annoyances for me.

Very dark detective, ghost fantasy story with just a smidgeon of humour...I just loved Trevor Dove !Totally engrossing read, flew through the 400 odd pages. Bargain price 99p. Well edited. Can't wait to read the sequel.

This book was so WTF for me. It was overly descriptive of boring parts. The first half was like ok….. maybe this is going somewhere cool…..wrong! Snooze fest in the middle and the last half of the book it was almost solely descriptions of torture/fetish porn mixed with poorly written Clive Barker level gore. I found myself checking out and had this not been an audiobook, I would have given up. I didn’t care a bit about Usher or any of the other characters for that matter. The author used repetit...