posted on 14 Dec 2023

Lucy Wilson:The Best Christmas Ever by Chris Lynch

This collection of three exciting short stories by Chris Lynch is set over the Christmases of 2018, 2019 and 2020. The central characters, Lucy Wilson and her best friend Hobo have featured before in The Lucy Wilson Mysteries which is a Lethbridge - Stewart spin off adventure that includes licensed characters originally created for the Doctor Who TV series.

Lucy and Hobo are firm friends, partly because they are the kind of children who thrive on unusual and sometimes very scary adventures involving monsters, aliens and time travel. She actually doesn’t have a lot of choice in this unconventional lifestyle because her now departed grandad, Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, has passed on his mission to defend Earth against a seemingly endless mishmash of malevolent creatures and other malign influences. Hobo is delighted to come along for the ride and to use his various nerdy areas of expertise to help out.

The first story opens with the depiction of the peculiar village of Frostingale where everything is dark for eleven months of every year after which, all is lit up with bright Christmas lights for December. The scene shifts to Lucy’s house where her parents are busy preparing for the festive period. Within the first few pages we are given a glimpse of her rather moody , exasperated persona as she endures their nagging and is generally bored by her domestic life. She strongly suspects that they have recently moved from London to the very uninspiring backwater of Ogmore-by-Sea in South Wales because of something to do with her Grandad.

When she is asked by her mum to set out the chocolate-box Victorian utopian miniature village on the dining table, I immediately thought of the strange events in the film ‘Beetlejuice’. Indeed, something very similar happens and eventually both Lucy and Hobo are sucked into the world where they become closely involved with the dangerous consequences of an earlier adventure of Grandad. I particularly liked the character of the Butcher who, despite his tiny size, has a menacing persona.

The next story begins with the intrepid pair returning from inside a wardrobe, another portal that Lucy acknowledges reminds her of a story she loved when she was little. As Christmas approaches, she receives a mysterious usb in the post which summons them to use their ‘unique talents and immediate attention’. The video shows a large dog and a group of four young people with a large multicoloured van who are investigating a haunted mansion. This likeness to the characters in ‘Scooby Doo’ is another clever example of cultural references that readers will relish.

Lucy and Hobo are eager to help out so persuade her dad to drive them to the remote location, persuading him that they are going to a party. When they get inside the spooky house and meet a housekeeper and a librarian who are trying to protect a massive archive, they begin to realise that they may be about to take part in another harem scarem, terrifying adventure. As in the real world, the funding for the library has been slashed which means that, apart from some ghosts, the two elderly custodians need urgent help to save ‘The Hard Archive’. When they are chased by a fierce Pirate ghost into the depths of the library, Grandad makes another timely appearance to save them from a terrifying sea monster. The sense of jeopardy is visceral as they make a lucky escape:

‘Spectral green tendrils had burst out most of the windows, wrapping back on themselves and winding around the house like a huge tentacled had. With a creak and a groan, the house began to collapse in on itself, the upper floors crumbling down as the tentacles grasped tighter and tighter.’

I think that the final story might be my favourite because of the atmosphere that is created at the beginning. Light snow has been falling for over a week in Ogmore-by-Sea but by Christmas Eve, the snow has drifted, trapping everybody in their houses with reduced food supplies and no internet access. As Lucy and Hobo resign themselves to a particularly dull Christmas break, they discover a mysterious German speaking Goatman in the back garden. They soon learn that he is Krampus, the mythical child stealing creature who appears in old European traditions. But when they persuade him to come into the house to get warm, Lucy’s dad recognises him as his long lost cousin Kevin!

I am not going to reveal the many twists and turns that result from all this when they discover that he is a ‘Temporal Avatar’ who has mislaid something that is extremely dangerous. When they all end up at a school end of term disco they are dazzled and disturbed by a ghastly noisy nightmare of Christmases past and present.

I strongly recommend this collection of well written, entertaining stories. Get your copy published by Candy Jar Books from your local independent bookshop - who will be happy to order it for you if they don’t have it on their shelves.

 

Karen Argent

December 2023