Gilray's Ghost

by John Gordon

A tense and gripping tale of horror and desire. In a pyramid-shaped tomb, in the forest, lie the last remains of Doctor Septimus Carr. An evil necromancer, he believed the bodily fluids of virgins could rejuvenate him; his grisly experiments claiming the life of a servant girl. Now, two centuries later, another girl is in mortal danger. Enter Gilray. Short and chubby, with a turn of speech as bizarre as his attire, Gilray has flown back in time to prevent the wickedness he fears is looming. But it's no simple task. For a start, who is the girl? Is it Linda Blake, Pauline Withers, Cassandra Ashe? Their teacher, flirtatious, poetry-loving Bob Wheatley, is the man whose help Gilray needs most, but he is preoccupied with passionate affairs of his own. At the same time, unknown to Gilray, the sinister Rosa and Robin Underleaf are planning to resurrect their "Master". The key, it seems, is the malign doctor's lost book of spells, if only Gilray can find and interpret it in time. The book explores a number of very different male-female relationships as it moves towards its chilling climax. John Gordon is the author of "The Ghost on the Hill", "The Burning Baby and Other Ghosts", 'The House on the Brink" ,"The Grasshopper" and "Ordinary Seaman".

291 pages, Hardcover

First published September 4, 1995

About the author

Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name

John Gordon was an English writer of adolescent supernatural fiction. He was the author of fifteen fantasy novels (including The Giant Under The Snow), four short story collections, over fifty short stories, and a teenage memoir. For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gor...

Reviews

[Bill Barnett · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read a few of John Gordon's other books and they are excellent; this one, however, has left a sour taste. Gordon usually writes with sensitivity about young people, their feelings, and emotional growing pains, but the cattiness and horniness of the teenagers in this novel are a departure. Factor in two teenage girls romantically involved with adult men (one of them the girl's teacher) and it becomes rather gross. The plotting is decent, there is a nicely-imagined future version of England, the quirky Gilray is a charming character, and the time-travel mechanics are novel, so it's not all bad. I do wonder if the inappropriate romance angle was forced on him by the publisher or if it was just a cynical ploy on the author's part to titillate a YA audience.