Mark Morris, The Dogs

First published back in February 2001 by Barrington Stoke as part of the reluctant readers series, Mark Morris ' s 103 page ghost story 'The Dogs 'really forms more of a short story than that of a proper novel. Indeed, the font size on each of the 103 pages is incredibly large, with new paragraphs drastically reducing the word count per page even more so.

The book begins with 'A Note From The Author 'whereby Morris explains that his inspiration for the tale came from a friend of his who lost her dogs and that Morris had found himself pondering the 'what if they suddenly turned up out of the blue after all these years 'question.

Morris explores this idea by way of a downbeat ghost story, where we find an unfortunate young girl named Alice Manly lose her parents in a plane crash and as a result, she has to live with her Aunt Vanessa. Soon enough the story begins to unfold it ' s creepy undertones, as first a local schoolgirl goes missing on the close by moors and then their beloved dogs go missing.

Morris throws in some hints of ghostly apparitions, leaving the reader not entirely sure if they are merely a dream or perhaps the apparitions stem from stressed induced hallucinations.

Sure enough, the tale is cranked up a notch in the horror scale as it spirals to the eventual heart stopping conclusion.

Not an entirely original or clever tale, this very much Ambrose Bierce style short is however well written and a thoroughly enjoyable read. Admittedly, the average reader will plough through the entire book from start to finish within an hour, but this should not put people off reading it.

The book includes several pen and ink illustrations by Roy Petrie, which adds a nice little touch to the book as a whole. The novel was also later reprinted in 2005.