Mitchell, George and Annie are a trio of twenty something’s sharing a house in Bristol, trying to live lives of social normality, which is harder than it sounds when you are respectively a vampire, werewolf and a ghost...

Being Human: Chasers is one of a new set of novels based on the television show, set in the second series, written by Mark Michalowski.

One of the things in reviewing the three books is that I am reading them in reverse order, although by different authors they should have been read in the order The Road, Chasers and Bad Blood. Still this latest spin off novel was actually quite a good read. Michalowski obviously prefers to generate humour by describing situations rather than sign posting to his audience and this makes the humour in the book all the more enjoyable.

Kaz turns up once more, only this time she has come to accept George's offer of help for the Lesbian couple to have a baby. In truth George didn’t mean that sort of help, but when Annie and Mitchell attempt to talk him out of it, it only makes him want to do it more. The problem is nobody knows if being a werewolf could become hereditary.

Mitchell is having his own problems. Having met Leo, a cancer patient at the hospital, who offers an unexpected friendship, Mitchell uncharacteristically agrees to attend a gig with him, and drags everyone else alone with him. At the gig Mitchell meet another vampire, Olive, who suspiciously already knows Leo.

This is not War and Peace so there is nothing deep here trying to get out. That’s not a criticism, it’s just the way of television tie-in books, whose remit is to capture the essence of the characters and to entertain. In these two respects Michalowski has turned in a book which fans of the show could play in their heads, I know I did.

He is spot on with all the main characters speech patterns and motivations. So a good read that should keep fans amused for a few hours.

7

Charles Packer