What do you think?
Rate this book
The Dark Masters Trilogy #2
Leytonstone
One evening in 1906 a chubby little boy of seven, son of a London greengrocer, is taken by his father to visit the local police station.
There he suddenly finds himself, inexplicably, locked up for a crime he hasn’t committed – or has he? Blinking into sunlight, traumatized by his overnight stay, he is told by his father the next morning: “Now you know what happens to naughty little boys!” But the incident is the catalyst for a series of events that will scar, and create, the world’s leading Master of Terror in the century to come…
*
The boy is Alfred Hitchcock.
The story is the gripping and evocative new novella by Stephen Volk, writer of the highly-acclaimed novella Whitstable – which featured Peter Cushing as its central character and was published in 2013 (also by Spectral Press) to coincide with the centenary of the great actor’s death.
Leytonstone – like Whitstable – elevates fact (in this case an anecdote the famous director told repeatedly throughout his life) into resonant and poignant fiction, lifting the veil on not only the innocent and troubled young “Fred” but his emotionally needy mother and a father constantly struggling to do the right thing. But what none of them knows is that, after that fateful night and its consequences, their lives will be changed forever…
*
As a screenwriter used to creating fear and terror for such directors as William Friedkin and Ken Russell, Stephen Volk has long been fascinated by both Hitchcock’s films and Hitchcock the man. “I wanted to explore what makes a person want to frighten others for a living,” he says. “But I’m all too aware that Hitch was a mass of contradictions, and any absolute ‘truth’ is an elusive beast, as notable recent films have proven. This is my Hitchcock – a scared little boy.”
Whitstable and Leytonstone are parts one and two of Volk’s putative series of thematically related but separate fictions, to be called The Dark Masters Trilogy.
PRAISE FOR STEPHEN VOLK:
“One of the most provocative and unsettling of contemporary writers” Andy Hedgecock (Asst Fiction Editor, Interzone)
“A master craftsman” Dark Musings
PRAISE FOR “WHITSTABLE”:
“A chilling cat-and-mouse tale… Whitstable is a triumph… as fitting a tribute to the man as could be imagined” Starburst
“Not only a gripping story but a vivid vignette about one of Britain’s best loved actors” Hellnotes
“I loved Whitstable! It’s a beautiful love letter to a man, a genre, and an era that means so much to those of us of a certain age” – Mick Garris, producer, Masters of Horror
There he suddenly finds himself, inexplicably, locked up for a crime he hasn’t committed – or has he? Blinking into sunlight, traumatized by his overnight stay, he is told by his father the next morning: “Now you know what happens to naughty little boys!” But the incident is the catalyst for a series of events that will scar, and create, the world’s leading Master of Terror in the century to come…
*
The boy is Alfred Hitchcock.
The story is the gripping and evocative new novella by Stephen Volk, writer of the highly-acclaimed novella Whitstable – which featured Peter Cushing as its central character and was published in 2013 (also by Spectral Press) to coincide with the centenary of the great actor’s death.
Leytonstone – like Whitstable – elevates fact (in this case an anecdote the famous director told repeatedly throughout his life) into resonant and poignant fiction, lifting the veil on not only the innocent and troubled young “Fred” but his emotionally needy mother and a father constantly struggling to do the right thing. But what none of them knows is that, after that fateful night and its consequences, their lives will be changed forever…
*
As a screenwriter used to creating fear and terror for such directors as William Friedkin and Ken Russell, Stephen Volk has long been fascinated by both Hitchcock’s films and Hitchcock the man. “I wanted to explore what makes a person want to frighten others for a living,” he says. “But I’m all too aware that Hitch was a mass of contradictions, and any absolute ‘truth’ is an elusive beast, as notable recent films have proven. This is my Hitchcock – a scared little boy.”
Whitstable and Leytonstone are parts one and two of Volk’s putative series of thematically related but separate fictions, to be called The Dark Masters Trilogy.
PRAISE FOR STEPHEN VOLK:
“One of the most provocative and unsettling of contemporary writers” Andy Hedgecock (Asst Fiction Editor, Interzone)
“A master craftsman” Dark Musings
PRAISE FOR “WHITSTABLE”:
“A chilling cat-and-mouse tale… Whitstable is a triumph… as fitting a tribute to the man as could be imagined” Starburst
“Not only a gripping story but a vivid vignette about one of Britain’s best loved actors” Hellnotes
“I loved Whitstable! It’s a beautiful love letter to a man, a genre, and an era that means so much to those of us of a certain age” – Mick Garris, producer, Masters of Horror
117 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2015
2 people are currently reading
87 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
December 29, 2014
From Stephen Volk comes a new tale in novella format which engrosses from the first paragraph and one that is so wonderfully evocative of a bygone era of England. The attention to detail of Fred's domestic life and his dreams as a young lad is absolutely wonderful. The introduction of the fearful and (as it later transpires) depraved Policeman sends chills down my adult spine, Fred's ghastly misdeed with The Girl With Yellow Hair is disturbingly well captured as indeed is every aspect of this extraordinary glimpse into an historical figure's life.
The segue into the adult Hitch at the awards ceremony at the end of the novella is masterful and cinematic and worthy of the Master's work.
Congratulations Stephen Volk, You've done it again! It's a unique, absorbing, disconcerting and evocative story and thus is a worthy successor to the wondrous 'Whitstable'.
The segue into the adult Hitch at the awards ceremony at the end of the novella is masterful and cinematic and worthy of the Master's work.
Congratulations Stephen Volk, You've done it again! It's a unique, absorbing, disconcerting and evocative story and thus is a worthy successor to the wondrous 'Whitstable'.
December 2, 2014
'Find kindness in your life,' a priest tells the young Alfred Hitchcock, the centrepiece of this new novella from Stephen Volk. But having been incarcerated in a police cell overnight, for no apparent reason other than a whim of his father's, kindness certainly didn't come easy to the young 'Fred'. Rejected by his schoolmates, Hitchcock turned his attention to the young, blonde, Olga Butterworth and, whether by way of retribution for his own experience, or not (it's hard to be sure), incarcerates her in turn. This leads to a heartbreaking sacrifice by his doting mother, but ultimate forgiveness and praise from both of his parents.
The author has said that 'not a word of it is true'. In a way I hope that some of the words are true, though I feel we would have heard more on the subject were it so, Hitchcock being so much a larger-than-life figure.
Following the success of the Peter Cushing-inspired WHITSTABLE, Stephen Volk has succeeded again with this original, well-plotted, and thought-provoking novella.
Highly recommended.
The author has said that 'not a word of it is true'. In a way I hope that some of the words are true, though I feel we would have heard more on the subject were it so, Hitchcock being so much a larger-than-life figure.
Following the success of the Peter Cushing-inspired WHITSTABLE, Stephen Volk has succeeded again with this original, well-plotted, and thought-provoking novella.
Highly recommended.
February 20, 2015
I came to this novella with high hopes. I’ve long been a fan of Alfred Hitchcock - from the books to which he lent his name, to the masterful films that have thrilled and scared me over the years - and Stephen Volk’s previous novella, “Whitstable” was one of my top reads of the year in 2012, a true five-star classic.
“Leytonstone” revolves around an anecdote Hitchcock told many times, that when he was seven his father had him locked away in the police cells with the warning “This is what happens to people who do bad things.” The incident apparently left the great director with a morbid fear of the police and was also cited as the reason for his recurring use of “wrong man” themes in his films. Volk takes this information and runs with it.
Fred Hitchcock is a chubby seven-year-old, who has friends but prefers time on his own and finds solace in lists - bus and train numbers, timetables - rather than the often unpredictable nature of the people around him. His mother often seems poorly and he’s made to stand at the foot of her bed when he gets home from school, reciting what he’s learned that day whilst his greengrocer father is strict and distant. A pupil at the local Catholic school, run with an iron-fist by the various priests and overseen by Father Mullins, Fred is only vaguely aware of girls, especially those in the school next door, apart from the one “with hair the colour of ripe bananas”.
When he is taken to the police station, we are introduced to Sergeant Stanley Sykes, a formidable presence with a Kitchener moustache, whose dark shadow hangs uneasily over the rest of the book. He locks young Fred up and taunts him and the night spent behind bars is genuinely harrowing and unpleasant. Released the next morning, the dynamics between Fred and his father (as well as those between his father and Sykes) are different, damaged in ways none of them really understand. Following this event and the discovery of a peephole at the school, the tone of the book starts to grow darker. After scaring the schoolgirls, Fred and his friends go to waste ground where there’s an abandoned, dilapidated house and there they try to kill a mouse - he doesn’t want to (he’s glad when it escapes), but he’s caught up in it. Exploring the house later, he’s scared at first but also “tired of trying to imagine what fear is like all the time” and when he discovers a small cupboard, he realises he can do something about it.
Fred discovers the “girl with yellow hair” is called Olga Butterworth and she lives with her parents next to the railway. They develop an uneasy acquaintance and when he decides to show her the old house, he sets into motion the last third of the book that will see everyone’s life change.
Set in 1906, an era Volk deftly captures of a changing (now largely gone) London, with the language, the dress, the rituals and customs (especially in the shops and pubs) vividly captured and brought to life. The social mores, the confusion of young Fred, the overbearing nature of both the police (as typified by Sykes) and the harsher still priests and nuns, create an atmosphere that points to something awful happening. And when that something happens it's shocking, with the fall-out of Fred’s action causing huge repercussions for everyone (especially his parents) apart from, it seems, himself, though perhaps this is addressed in the moving coda.
The characterisation, always difficult when dealing with real people, is something Volk does especially well (his version of Peter Cushing in “Whitstable” was a culmination of both everything you wanted him to be and everything he came across as in interviews) and here is no exception. Fred is a little boy, at once an innocent and a manipulator, at odds with his contemporaries and his parents and scared of people he sees from his bedroom window, being adults in the night and acting in ways he doesn’t - and shouldn’t - understand. His parents often seem as confused but as the book gets darker they reveal heretofore hidden depths of love and understanding, which make the emotional impact all that much stronger. The villain of the piece, the unpleasant, perhaps sadistic, sleazy policeman Sergeant Stanley Sykes is a real monster, at once dedicated to upholding the law whilst at the same time making sure that he picks up his own little perks.
As a Hitchcock fan, I loved finding the allusions to his later career - the poorly Mother, coddling her son; the concept of “the girl with the yellow hair”; the voyeurism of late night windows and Olga with her parents; the body in the bag of potatoes; the stuffed bird in Father Mullins office and I’m sure there were many more - but none of them felt shoehorned it, they had a place in the fabric of the story and they contributed to the weight of the tale. And it is a weighty tale, sometimes innocent and charming, often darker and grittier, but never once putting a foot wrong.
Superbly written, atmospheric and tense, this is perfectly structured and never less than gripping. A wonderful read and a worthy successor to the powerful “Whitstable”, I look forward to whichever master of British cinema Mr Volk chooses to write about next. Very highly recommended.
“Leytonstone” revolves around an anecdote Hitchcock told many times, that when he was seven his father had him locked away in the police cells with the warning “This is what happens to people who do bad things.” The incident apparently left the great director with a morbid fear of the police and was also cited as the reason for his recurring use of “wrong man” themes in his films. Volk takes this information and runs with it.
Fred Hitchcock is a chubby seven-year-old, who has friends but prefers time on his own and finds solace in lists - bus and train numbers, timetables - rather than the often unpredictable nature of the people around him. His mother often seems poorly and he’s made to stand at the foot of her bed when he gets home from school, reciting what he’s learned that day whilst his greengrocer father is strict and distant. A pupil at the local Catholic school, run with an iron-fist by the various priests and overseen by Father Mullins, Fred is only vaguely aware of girls, especially those in the school next door, apart from the one “with hair the colour of ripe bananas”.
When he is taken to the police station, we are introduced to Sergeant Stanley Sykes, a formidable presence with a Kitchener moustache, whose dark shadow hangs uneasily over the rest of the book. He locks young Fred up and taunts him and the night spent behind bars is genuinely harrowing and unpleasant. Released the next morning, the dynamics between Fred and his father (as well as those between his father and Sykes) are different, damaged in ways none of them really understand. Following this event and the discovery of a peephole at the school, the tone of the book starts to grow darker. After scaring the schoolgirls, Fred and his friends go to waste ground where there’s an abandoned, dilapidated house and there they try to kill a mouse - he doesn’t want to (he’s glad when it escapes), but he’s caught up in it. Exploring the house later, he’s scared at first but also “tired of trying to imagine what fear is like all the time” and when he discovers a small cupboard, he realises he can do something about it.
Fred discovers the “girl with yellow hair” is called Olga Butterworth and she lives with her parents next to the railway. They develop an uneasy acquaintance and when he decides to show her the old house, he sets into motion the last third of the book that will see everyone’s life change.
Set in 1906, an era Volk deftly captures of a changing (now largely gone) London, with the language, the dress, the rituals and customs (especially in the shops and pubs) vividly captured and brought to life. The social mores, the confusion of young Fred, the overbearing nature of both the police (as typified by Sykes) and the harsher still priests and nuns, create an atmosphere that points to something awful happening. And when that something happens it's shocking, with the fall-out of Fred’s action causing huge repercussions for everyone (especially his parents) apart from, it seems, himself, though perhaps this is addressed in the moving coda.
The characterisation, always difficult when dealing with real people, is something Volk does especially well (his version of Peter Cushing in “Whitstable” was a culmination of both everything you wanted him to be and everything he came across as in interviews) and here is no exception. Fred is a little boy, at once an innocent and a manipulator, at odds with his contemporaries and his parents and scared of people he sees from his bedroom window, being adults in the night and acting in ways he doesn’t - and shouldn’t - understand. His parents often seem as confused but as the book gets darker they reveal heretofore hidden depths of love and understanding, which make the emotional impact all that much stronger. The villain of the piece, the unpleasant, perhaps sadistic, sleazy policeman Sergeant Stanley Sykes is a real monster, at once dedicated to upholding the law whilst at the same time making sure that he picks up his own little perks.
As a Hitchcock fan, I loved finding the allusions to his later career - the poorly Mother, coddling her son; the concept of “the girl with the yellow hair”; the voyeurism of late night windows and Olga with her parents; the body in the bag of potatoes; the stuffed bird in Father Mullins office and I’m sure there were many more - but none of them felt shoehorned it, they had a place in the fabric of the story and they contributed to the weight of the tale. And it is a weighty tale, sometimes innocent and charming, often darker and grittier, but never once putting a foot wrong.
Superbly written, atmospheric and tense, this is perfectly structured and never less than gripping. A wonderful read and a worthy successor to the powerful “Whitstable”, I look forward to whichever master of British cinema Mr Volk chooses to write about next. Very highly recommended.
November 17, 2015
In Whitstable, Stephen Volk channelled horror icon Peter Cushing’s agony after the death of his beloved wife with such poignancy and reality that it brought back to this reader every resounding feeling of grief that I’d ever experienced at the death of a loved one.
In his new novella, Leytonstone, Volk channels Alfred Hitchcock’s anxieties as an 8 year old growing up in the east end of London in 1916. Alfred was an intelligent child with a seemingly indifferent father and an overbearing mother. The book opens with the oft told tale of Alfred’s father taking him to the local police station and having him incarcerated in a police cell overnight. (In reality it was only around 5 minutes.) However in the young Alfred's mind, this experience is stretched agonizingly into hours. Every nuance of the experience: the sounds of the door clanging shut, the smells of urine and sweat from the old blanket on the stained mattress, the fear felt by the tormented little boy, is masterfully described. We are not only reading about Alfred's childhood experiences, we are living them in gruesome detail.
This incident inevitably has a knock on effect later on in the story. No spoilers here, but echoes of Alfred’s future life have co-starring roles: the girl with the yellow hair, peepholes, cruel policemen, stuffed birds, etc. Injustice abounds, as it would in real life, but after the first terrifying incident in that police cell, Alfred experiments with other lives and the feelings of his friends in a near psychopathic manner. He was frightened almost to death, so now the tables must be turned and he scares and torments an innocent girl in a way that his villains in his future films would have been proud of. This is a psychological point: the powerless often turn on those weaker than them to exert their will.
We vividly see the background of the obsessions and fascinations that made the chubby young outsider become master of suspense in later life. Highly recommended.
In his new novella, Leytonstone, Volk channels Alfred Hitchcock’s anxieties as an 8 year old growing up in the east end of London in 1916. Alfred was an intelligent child with a seemingly indifferent father and an overbearing mother. The book opens with the oft told tale of Alfred’s father taking him to the local police station and having him incarcerated in a police cell overnight. (In reality it was only around 5 minutes.) However in the young Alfred's mind, this experience is stretched agonizingly into hours. Every nuance of the experience: the sounds of the door clanging shut, the smells of urine and sweat from the old blanket on the stained mattress, the fear felt by the tormented little boy, is masterfully described. We are not only reading about Alfred's childhood experiences, we are living them in gruesome detail.
This incident inevitably has a knock on effect later on in the story. No spoilers here, but echoes of Alfred’s future life have co-starring roles: the girl with the yellow hair, peepholes, cruel policemen, stuffed birds, etc. Injustice abounds, as it would in real life, but after the first terrifying incident in that police cell, Alfred experiments with other lives and the feelings of his friends in a near psychopathic manner. He was frightened almost to death, so now the tables must be turned and he scares and torments an innocent girl in a way that his villains in his future films would have been proud of. This is a psychological point: the powerless often turn on those weaker than them to exert their will.
We vividly see the background of the obsessions and fascinations that made the chubby young outsider become master of suspense in later life. Highly recommended.
October 8, 2015
I snapped up Leytonstone as soon as I could because I'd been so charmed by Volk's lovely, generous Whitstable (and, for that matter, his work on the subtle and moving ghost story film The Awakening). First Peter Cushing, now Alfred Hitchcock: I look forward to as many novellas about horror film luminaries as Volk wants to write.
It isn't a retread, either: Leytonstone is, appropriately enough, chillier and more psychological than Whitstable. The novel's centerpiece, "Fred," is a masterpiece of characterization. He's sometimes pitiable and sometimes cruel, sometimes the victim and sometimes--well--the director of misfortune. Volk could have made it easy on his reader by making Fred the classic introverted childhood genius, but instead, he complicates things... but as the excellent afterword points out, he doesn't demonize his subject, either. If the novella is haunting, it's because it doesn't take genius or special talent for us to lie, abuse, and betray each other. Fred is more skilled at it than most--and more conscious of it--but it's the kind of thing that goes on every day. He deserves our prickly discomfort, but also our sympathy, and, more importantly, our empathy. Because we've come full-circle on reader identification again: this isn't just your admired director. This is you.
It isn't a retread, either: Leytonstone is, appropriately enough, chillier and more psychological than Whitstable. The novel's centerpiece, "Fred," is a masterpiece of characterization. He's sometimes pitiable and sometimes cruel, sometimes the victim and sometimes--well--the director of misfortune. Volk could have made it easy on his reader by making Fred the classic introverted childhood genius, but instead, he complicates things... but as the excellent afterword points out, he doesn't demonize his subject, either. If the novella is haunting, it's because it doesn't take genius or special talent for us to lie, abuse, and betray each other. Fred is more skilled at it than most--and more conscious of it--but it's the kind of thing that goes on every day. He deserves our prickly discomfort, but also our sympathy, and, more importantly, our empathy. Because we've come full-circle on reader identification again: this isn't just your admired director. This is you.
December 5, 2019
This is a great novella based on a specific incident in the young Alfred Hitchcock's life which subsequently forms the backbone for his demeanor, interests, films and philosophy. Fictionalised biography can come under criticism for not being accurate and it's true that factual accuracy is shelved here but that's not to the detriment of story. Volk doesn't put a foot wrong in tone, characterisation or prose. This is an engaging, compelling work which illuminates Hitchcock in the same way that Joyce Carol Oates' "Blonde" illuminates Monroe or John Connolly's "He" does the same for Stan Laurel. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
January 25, 2021
This is time’s vast leap for man, but I don’t want to reveal more contents of these closing pages in case I spoil them. I merely ask a question. What was fabricated from scratch and what was already there, as viewed through this book’s haunting squint-hole upon truth and fiction, shutting and opening, as it does, like the aperture of a lens? Leminscate or Leytonstone.
“Soon it begins, and never ends.”
The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.
Above is one of its observations at the time of the review.
“Soon it begins, and never ends.”
The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.
Above is one of its observations at the time of the review.
January 3, 2019
Evocative to start with, as we follow young “Fred” through his famous legal scrape, then it darkens into something quite different (thankfully fictional but with roots in reality). As we worry about the conclusion of this second act, a third, crueller development bites its way in. This is not hard history but it has enough plausibility, especially early on, and young Fred grips us as we follow his changing persona towards the master director, with issues, that he was to become.
July 8, 2019
Good story. I found it gripping and wanted to know the outcome. A chilling story but a very plausible reason for why Hitchcock was as he was.
October 29, 2025
I get it, but I don't particularly like it.
December 16, 2015
Nice insight into a story about the master of suspense storytelling. Stephen Volk has built upon actual events to tell his own fictional quirky tale that opens the door onto the dark world of a boy destined for greatness.
July 30, 2015
Fantastic novella dramatising an anecdote oft-told by Alfred Hitchcock about a childhood episode. A worthy follow-up/counterpoint to Volk's earlier novella Whitstable.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews