The Waiting Room: Very much a traditional ghost story but masterfully framed for maximum disorientation. As a friend noted, the main characters aren't particularly interesting. The mystery, which appears to really mean "puzzle" here, is what it's about. The characters are puzzle pieces, and it is neat to see how they fit together, and Rankin did a really good job of rationalizing all that into the Hellblazer mode (tying it to one character who is the fulcrum for it all). But, yeah, the characters have no development, aside from shifting from not knowing their fate to knowing it, and from us misinterpreting their dreams to being told flat-out what those dreams "symbolize" (a direct causality that is too clean-cut even for Freud, and utterly disinterested in the ambiguity inherent in the surreal). If anything, the characters change depending on what the story needs. At times, just in time for whatever the imminent joke needs. The story follows a dozen or so contestants, neither of which remembers how he/she agreed to join the show and each of which is haunted by his/her own demon. The characters are well-flushed for the book's short length, and their dialogs are generally amusing. Constantine enters the house briefly after his arrival and begins interacting with its tenants to investigate the strange happenings. The focus periodically shifts to the showrunners and viewers as well, showing a few supporting characters that also contribute to the plot. Dell’edera’s artwork is solid throughout, although a bit confusing at times: I found it difficult to differentiate between Constantine and Ishmael at times - with them both being white with fair hair. Also, it’s not entirely clear where they are in the house at times as it all looks the same. The story I most enjoyed in "Dark Entries" (His second collection of stories following "We Are for the Dark: Six Ghost Stories") is the story called "The View" (Which was originally printed in his first collection "Six Ghost Stories"). The story concerns the protagonist a gentleman named Carfax a vulnerable and exhausted man who needs to get away from the hectic life in the city. He meets a beautiful woman on a sea voyage who invites him to stay with her in her home. As the story evolves we glimpse Carfax's voyage from imagined self doubt into the fringes of madness, yet hopelessly madly in love with his Femme Fatal. This is one great story.

Choice of Weapons - I really liked this one, the end left me a bit at sea, the last paragraph in particular REALLY throws one for a loop. But overall I thought this was an excellent story with a very shadowy, almost "haunted house" atmosphere to it. A man becomes suddenly obsessed with a woman he sees in a restaurant, he goes after her, contending for her love with a quite sinister figure. Vertigo Crime που διαβάζω, το οποίο όμως ξεφεύγει από τα στενά όρια του αστυνομικού, μιας και πρωταγωνιστής είναι ο John Constantine, ή αλλιώς Hellblazer, ένας ντετέκτιβ παραφυσικών φαινομένων με ξεχωριστές δυνατότητες. Η αλήθεια είναι ότι παίζει να είναι η πρώτη φορά που ασχολούμαι με τον συγκεκριμένο χαρακτήρα, μιας και στο παρελθόν δεν έτυχε να διαβάσω κάποιο κόμικ με αυτόν πρωταγωνιστή και δεν έχω δει καν την ταινία με τον Keanu Reeves. Θα επανορθώσω όμως!John Constantine, να συμμετάσχει στο παιχνίδι και να ανακαλύψει τι γίνεται. Όμως τα πράγματα δεν είναι καθόλου όπως φαίνονται... A Big Brother type house and it's contestants are being haunted by ghosts so the show's producer gets Constantine in to investigate. Things become stranger as none of the contestants can remember how they came on the show or much about their past. Then about the halfway point things get very Hellblazer and the story takes off.

Dark Entries was first published in 1964 and contains six curious and macabre stories of love, death and the supernatural, including the classic story 'Ringing the Changes'.This graphic novel is about John Constantine trying to do find out the real deal behind the unscripted hauntings in a reality horror show. But as he works it out, horrors from his past come running at him, jaws open, literally ;)⁣ Somehow it simultaneously roams around the fields of murder mystery, thriller, suspense with excellent balance and grabs 200% attention of the reader's mind. The writing is so smooth as if we have already been reading about this long ago. The characters, the twists, action, the dialogues are top notch! No, seriously top notch! And Mr John F'ing Constantine is at his best in the book luv! (Satan can go n' eat his heart out. Wait, does he have one?) The View: A beautiful, sad fable about a man who is pixilated by a magical woman in a magical house, and then lives on, literally older and sadder. There is such a powerful aura of romantic longing and desolation around this story. A train passenger who has to spend the night in a waiting room connects with the dead and finds that there seems to be an unspoken assumption of understanding between him and them.

These are NOT horror stories. Some of them hardly even seem to be stories at all...they're more like windows that look briefly on to some strange portion of someone's life and then they move on. There is no clear plot or point usually, but I found myself thinking deeply about every one of these tales, wondering if there were some hidden meaning that I wasn't getting. There was one seemingly clear ghost story here, "The Waiting Room." (I wonder if it was decided that there needed to be one clear, straightforward story included with this collection just to give the reader a break from all the thinking?) Choice Of Weapons: A man falls in love with a strange, seductive girl who lives in an eerie old house. She is lost in a dream of love, and so is he. Dreamy and startling. I picture Eva Green as the girl. Before DC pulled the plug on their adult-oriented horror line, Vertigo, they were still doing some really interesting things. In 2009, Vertigo started a Vertigo Crime series, a digest-sized hardcover graphic novel series written by well-known authors in the crime/mystery genre.

Dark Entries is one of these self-contained graphic novels featuring characters from DC comics in an alternative, more relaxed universe. Specifically, Dark Entries tells the story of how Constantine was invited to contain a situation where the haunted house on a horror reality show began to act on its own. While it is immediately given away that the gentlemen who invited Constantine had a lot more in mind than a simple exorcism, I found the plot developments that followed to be least expected and quite enjoyable. Sally, who is decidedly insane at this point says "Do you love children, Mel? Would you like to see my baby? . . . Let me tell you, Mel . . . that it's possible for a child to be born in a manner you'd never dream of . . .Will you be godmother? Come and see your god-child, Mel." This is a classic example for novels of horror, ghost, exorcism, monster, spooky genre! Ian Rankin starts the story as if the plot is small and easy and just another Haunted-house story. But with one after another surprisingly enjoyable twists it becomes so huge and so epic (from Heaven to Hell all the way) that it is beyond explanation!