Of Ghosts and Men in a Saturday Law Interview

Ghosts I saw early in life were inevitably a figment of imagination. So conscious of their existence in a context of fear, even if they had not existed it would've been necessary for me to invent them. The faded green glow of a nightlight that Dad bought in Woolworths consoled me at night for almost the entirety of my childhood. At bedtime, after the main lights were switched off by Mother I saw little for the first ten minutes or so. That would be the scariest part. Then, ever so slowly, my eyes would get adjusted to seeing in the dark. I could make out the desk, a table full of school books and two writing desks, one in light teak for my sister and the woodworm ridden dark one for me. I slept in the same room as my sister throughout adolescence. This should have provided a little more comfort but she, a sound sleeper would hardly have come to my rescue had the ghosts of inferno attacked. But, they left me alone.

Lately, I have felt a little less scared of the spirit world, albeit, none the wiser about it. If the state of death, purgatory, cold-sleep and afterlife interests the reader, the Saturday Law Interview with novelist and Crown Prosecution Service Lawyer Mark Holmes is exactly about all that and more. A promising young lawyer gets blown to bits by an accidental missile launch and ends up in afterlife. What makes Holmes' novel so readable is that his underworld feels so very familiar. The processes and structures of the real world seemed to have carried over just to make this life beyond a little more palatable. This is not just a story about the afterlife but more a tapestry for exploring the human condition. Nuff said. You can read all about what inspired Mark Holmes to be a writer and how his day job as a lawyer fits in with the fictional world.