One of the advantages of not spending a lot of time on line recently is that I’ve been able to read quite a bit – and so I was delighted when the monsters appeared at my cell door with a proof copy of the third book in Alan Gibbons’ Hell’s Underground series, Renegade.

In this installment, renegade demon Paul Rector is taken back to the 1830s to face up to his ancestor, Samuel – also known as the Satan of Spitalfields.  The monstrous villain at the head of the gang of Rat Boys, Samuel has stolen, assaulted and killed his way to the top of the local crime scene – but he has darker goals in mind.  Through the torture of a railway engineer’s daughter, he plans to break further into the crypt of the evil Lud and help return his master to the throne.

The only people standing in Rector’s way are a young Jewish boy searching for a lost relative, Samuel’s unwilling girlfriend and Paul himself.  Will they be enough to stand up to the vast army of the undead the Rat Boys are working to rise up against the East End?

Renegade is easily the most powerful and terrifying of the Hell’s Underground series so far and I, for one, can’t wait to see where the ghostly train will take Paul Rector on his thankless journey next.