Barnaby Grimes is a tick-tock lad, delivering messages and running errands all over the city, day and night. Gangland funerals and diving expeditions are hazardous enough, but it is when the graveyards begin to give up their secrets that this tick-tock lad faces his deadliest challenge yet. Read this blood-curdling tale of greed and betrayal, if you dare, and find out whether Barnaby will be defeated by the Legion of the Dead...

Take a step back in time to a fantasy Victorian England where messages are delivered by tick-tock lads, some of them using the conventional roads of London, others, like Barnaby, highstacking across the rooftops. Barnaby Grimes is one of the few, and as a result the best, who risk the rooftops, as a result he is one of the best tick-tock lads, fast and reliable. When he latest errand takes him over to the docks and slums of London it seems that there are some nasty surprises in store for him. Running into a gang of thugs he is quick to identify a familiar face but just as quickly finds himself attending the funeral of one of the infamous gang bosses. Which is worse, slums or a funeral in a graveyard which has seen the dead rise?

Just when it seems things couldn’t get worse one of Barnaby’s clients, the indubitable Professor, asks for Barnaby’s assistance on a diving trip, so it is back to the docks, this time to delve into the deep waters and fight off sea monsters! Here events take a turn for the worse and leave the reader wondering how Barnaby will ever find the answer to his many burning questions. Follow Barnaby as he gets drawn into a sinister and frightening adventure in the fantastic, yet somehow realistic Victorian London.

The talents of Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell have once again combined to produce a beautifully illustrated compelling story. ‘Barnaby Grimes: Legion of the Dead’ combines of fact, fiction, horror and adventure with the text being spookily bought to life through the black and white illustration.

 A great story but not one for the faint-hearted!

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2008-06-29