Tinkingumble

Oct 2020
Grave Secrets - Alice James – Solaris, 2020
[Disclosure: This book was written by a friend, so this is more an introduction than a review.]

In S.A. Wakefield's wonderful children's book Bottersnikes and Gumbles, there is a character called Tinkingumble who has Tinks, bright ideas that sound like a spoon tapping a glass. At one point in the story, Tinkingumble's faculty gets stuck until an accident causes it to unstick, causing him to tink wildly like a cash register, and he has to sit under a bush to sort out all the good ideas. This book feels a bit like that.

Welcome to the world of Lavington Windsor, Staffordshire estate agent by day, zombie-raising necromancer by night (she has never found a way of making her hobby pay). Toni, as she is known to her friends, is a scatty redhead with a nice line in witty banter and an unfortunate love life. Balancing her compulsion to raise the dead with her day job is hard enough, but when she is introduced to Oscar, an eligible vampire who is looking for a place to live with his coterie, things get a whole lot more complicated.
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