The Suspicions of Mr Whicher

The appearance of the detective in real life and in fiction seem to me to be entwined. The autobiography of the great French thief taker Eugene Francois Vidocq seems to have been an influence on both the establishment of the first detective unit in Britain and in Edgar Allen Poe's creation of what many argue is the first literary detective, Auguste Dupin in Murders in the Rue Morgue, published in 1841. The first detective department in Britain was created in 1843.

Detectives quickly started popping up everywhere – Dickens was a big fan of the real life and fictional detectives, and packed his monthly magazine All the Year Round with fictions and features on the new agents of order.

The Penguin Book of Ghosts

I saw a ghost once, or at least what I thought was a ghost. I was six years old or so, and we lived in a big Edwardian semi in Surrey. It was a winter evening and I was on the landing. I was alone, and I'd turned the lights out to get a better look at the flashing red lasery things on the front of my battery operated robot. Out of the corner of my eye, in the very periphary of my vision, I saw a flicker of light that I interpreted then as a woman in a crinoline drifting up the stairs and out of my view.

The sighting must have lasted just a second or two. If I shut my eyes, I can still see it now, both the image of the old fashioned lady passing across the landing, and the striated lights of a car passing by refracted through the windows and curtains, which is what I now think I actually saw. 

More than the image, though, what lingers for me is the sensation – the liquid cold of apprehension, the prickle of hair raising on my arm and neck like the unexpected – uninvited, unwelcome - stroke of a cold hand. It was a moment of vertigo during which the material world seemed to shake and shudder away from me.

I think this sensation of transportation – as unpleasant as it can be – lies behind our obsession with ghosts and spirits. It's a somewhat mystical thing, and I have to say that I have found the experience of reading The Penguin Book of Ghosts a somewhat religious one.

Occult London by Merlin Coverley

Lot's of writers are attracted to the idea of London steeped in the occult. It's certainly got the pedigree: there's John Dee living at Mortlake, and the possibly occult Masonic shenanigans of Hawksmoor, but things really got going in the 19^th century. In those years, the city seemed to be at the centre of attempts to reach through the veil, starting with mystical poetry of Blake, and then Swedenborg established the spiritualist church here, Blavatsky settled the HQ of the Theosophical movement here, the Golden Dawn began here.

I wonder why London attracted this sudden flourishing in mystical thought?

Looking for Jake by China Miéville

This book was given to me by my not quite uncle Alan. Alan married my Mum's sister in the sixties when I was a wee baby – the tale of me vomiting all over everyone has been retold many times both by my aunty and my Mum. They were regular visitors to our home when I was a kid living in the UK and seemd seemed impossibly glamorous and interesting to me. They were somewhat younger than Mum and Dad and were the sort of couple who always knew about the cool interesting things. They were always fashionably dressed – leather jackets or Afghan coats, Chelsea boots and granddad shirts, the whole thing. Birthday presents were always interesting and quirky – unusual children's books or odd toys perhaps from their travels in exotic places, and whenever they came to visit – or when we went to visit them – it always an interesting and exciting time.

I knew Alan for the first eight or so years of my life and, aside from my Dad, Alan was the other ideal of manhood that my little six year old brain latched onto. Dad liked show tunes and trad jazz, Alan liked The Beatles and Bob Dylan. Dad was patrician and dignified, fashionable in his own way, of course, but a little staid and old fashioned, while Alan was zany and trendy and made a big impression on me.