DEAD MEDIUM -update

Dead Medium - for one day only free to download on 13th January 2013.

DEAD MEDIUM by Peter John

May Elizabeth Trump disliked the company of others and death did little to warm her spirit. With a dead cat her only companion, she roamed the living world trying to come to terms with her new condition. Her path crossed with that of another of the newly departed. Penny Saunders needed May's help and May was in a unique position to offer it. For she was a dead medium, a ghost with the power to speak with the living and her services were to become in great demand. Spirits with long awaiting messages were not the only ones to take an interest in May's activities. Something dark was lurking in the shadows, stalking her. Even the dead are not left to rest in peace. Highly addictive and readable with moments of deadpan humour. £6.99 paperback or Kindle version @ £3.20 via Amazon

FAST GIRLS (2012)

FAST GIRLS opens up in the UK on the 15th June. The movie deals with a quartet of young girls and their journey towards taking part as the British relay team in the 2012 London Olympics. The movie stars Lenora Crichlow, Lashana Lynch, Dominique Tipper and Hannah Frankson along with Noel Clarke, Rupert Graves and Phil Davis. One of the stars Noel Clarke has come a long way since playing Mickey in Dr.Who and now enjoys a credit list that includes Kidulthood, Adulthood and 4-3-2-1 to name but a few acting/producing and writing credits. And not only does he act in Fast Girls but co-wrote the script. Fast Girls should have been the feelgood movie that highlighted the work that British athletes do in preparation for the Olympic Games - OUR Olympic games. The same Olympic Games that Londoners are paying for via that 'little bit extra' added on to the Council Tax. There are some people out there who think that some of us have forgotten about that. Return to the Olympic theme - halfway through the making a movie that promotes the Olympics - an idiot from the International Olympic Committee said that neither the words 'Olympic' nor '2012' could be used in the movie as these words were copyrighted. Since when? That means that movies like 'Cool Runnings', 'Chariots Of Fire' and '2012' should have been dragged into court for breach of copyright etc. One of the American Presidents said something along the lines that it wasn't about what you could do for your country but what your country could do for you. Well, my country and the London Olympic Committee could have stood up for this movie So now Fast Girls is about a team of athletes traing for the 2011 World Athletics Championship - but for me it will be just as intended a tribute to the young athletes that put their heart and soul into doing their best for their country at the 2012 Olympics.

THE AFFAIR by Lee Child

The events in Lee Child's latest Jack Reacher novel takes place in March 1997 just six months before the events in 'Killing Floor' (the first Reacher novel). Janice May Chapman's body is found with her throat cut behind a bar in a small Mississippi town - but this is an army town and the question is was the killer a local or a soldier from the barracks.Duncan Munro of the Military Police is already on the base and has shut it down - all leave cancelled. Reacher's job is to go in undercover. However, the local sheriff is a woman, Elizabeth Deveraux, a former Marine and MP - so it takes her all of five minutes to blow Reacher's cover. Nor is it long before we discover that the killer has struck before with the same M.O. only the first two victims were not white. Also, Alpha and Bravo Companies based at Kelham Army base have on-off clandestine ops in Kosovo and that all the murders had taken place after the return of Bravo Company. And that is where I leave the plot summary. Of course, there is a cover-up going on - and the suspects are quickly revealed so that all is needed is a procedural story of how the reader arrives at the conclusion. However, there is, I felt, an unnecessary side story that was intended to throw the reader. For me it didn't work but there you go and that is only my opinion. To be honest having read 'The Enemy' and 'Killing Floor' I enjoyed this book just as much and still look forward to 'A Wanted Man' which will be out in September this year. I read on the Piccadilly Publishing blog and The Tainted Archive that 'One Shot' renamed 'Reacher' is to star Tom Cruise in the title role. The New York Times describes Jack Reacher as "That legend of a tough, cerebral drifter, a latter day 6-foot-5-inch cowboy...." Need i say more?

BODIE by Neil Hunter (e-book)

It was great to see that Neil Hunter's 'Bodie' was about to make a comeback. The original Star paperbacks ran to a series of six - all of them coming out at the wane of what had been a successful era for the western. On the spine the books were called 'Bodie The Stalker' - not a name that was used in the story. This time the series is coming out in e-book format from Piccadilly Publishing. And the brains behind this new publishing venture who hope to bring more series from the group of writers known as the Piccadilly Cowboys are David Whitehead and Mike Stotter. Both men have a long history with the western genre from their childhood in London's East End right through to today where they are western writers in their own right. They have always championed the genre and the writers of such series as 'Herne The Hunter' and 'Hart The Regulator' and many others. Bodie is a bounty hunter and the action of these books take place at a time when bounty hunting was legal. While Bodie is a man of action, he is also a thinker and plans ahead to his own exacting rules and regulations. A man of few words he gets the job done - sometimes fairly as is seen in the opening to 'Trackdown' the first book in the series. Bodie 1: Trackdown is available from all the usual outlets.

THE VOICE

So the Beeb want to sack Jessie J because she thinks that the show is lame. Why? For saying how it is? I would have thought that it would be a good idea for the BBC to rethink their show. Mind you most of the coaches failed to turn around for about 90% of the talented singers and took just a small per centage on. I lost interest way back when Jaz Ellington was asked to sing another song - and the backing band knew exactly what to play. So the word 'rigged' comes to mind - and, of course, this is the guy who is the bookies favourite. Though, I think there is a dark horse in the shape of Bo Bruce - except that she keeps reminding me, in looks, of a mature Alex Parks and sounds like her. I half expect to hear her sing 'Beautiful' at some stage. Can't help but think that way. And, in case, anyone has forgotten Alex Parks well she won the 2005 Fame Academy (an older version of The Voice) on the BBC. She recorded two albums (and, yes, I have them both) and then disappeared. And what was Holly Willoughby doing apologising for a brilliant and raunchy performance by Becky Hill? Now, if Becky Hill or Joelle (who got shown the door last week) came out with albums tomorrow I would buy them. Actually, the whole show is a waste of time and not much different in texture than 'The X Factor' or 'Britains' Got Talentless'. In fact, I'm not sure why I'm even bothering to write about it. Well, I do as I find it difficult to understand why it is the talentless who win these shows - and not those who do. Becky Hill has talent - but will she be able to cope with the pressure that would result. Will Joelle disappear into obscurity - I'd like to think that there is a record producer out there who spotted her. The same goes for the Ruth that is on Tom Jones team. As Tom Jones said, women are able to express themselves much better than their male counterparts. Still all was not lost. At least Chelsea beat Bayern Munich - so my evening viewing ended on a happier note.

MAX PAYNE 3

I bought this game more on the strength of Rockstar's previous games 'L.A.Noire' and 'Red Dead Redemption'. That was my first mistake. The second was actually attempting to play the game. The game starts with a long and boring prologue complete with credits as per a movie - so long that I could nip out to the kitchen and make a cup of coffee and a cheese sandwich. Then 'the game' started with yet another long drawn out part of the storyline followed by a bit of player action that was interupted by another cut scene followed by....well, the whole of Chapter One was more lenghthy cutscenes than game. Chapter Two didn't look much better. BUT....that is not the worst aspect of 'Max Payne 3'. The cut scenes and monologues are delivered in a continuous monotone and accompanied by flashing split screens, supposedly important capitalised words from the dialogue, blurred images that double and triple on themselves in such a flashy way that the developers seem not to understand why games contain an 'epilepsy warning'. After a chapter and a half I was suffering max pain - a headache. Not only that but watching a man wallow in self-pity while downing bottles of Jack Daniels gets a little boring and any attempt to skip it is met by a message 'still loading'. I could see that as Max Payne grabbed another bottle. Still what little gameplay there was was pretty good - pity some decisions are taken out of the players hands with slo-mo cutscenes. XBOX World carried one of those boastful articles about getting their hands on this game a couple of months before it came out. Give them their due their 'hands on' as they admitted was a chance to play the multiplayer parts of the game. However they did say that they had played one level of the solo campaign - one would presume from that that there were no cutscenes added to the demo that they played. Still there is an interesting point in their article and that is that, to my mind, the online multiplayer games now outweigh the the solo campaigns. When a player compares games with others it just amazes me that they have scored on-line achievements but no in-game. I'm not a great fan of the Grand Theft Auto series but I would rate them above this mess. Talking of which isn't it about time the British branch of Rockstar came up with a 'Grand Theft Auto: London'? Surely, an update on the old Playstation One game is well overdue.