Mister Kreasey's Demon

Heckled, often ignored and threatened by the street-hardened students who mistake gentleness for weakness in their teacher, Matt Kreasey has perhaps just one vestige of tenderness that he can still recognize in a student who is called Amy. On passing his neighbour on the steps of his apartment while visiting to bring her teacher an overdue essay...

"Kreasey wondered whether his student had appeared before his immaculately groomed neighbour, Doctor Mallaby, in her very highest heels, the ones that gave Amy an extra three-and-a-half inches of height over a world that had always seemed to look down on her. On her first visit, he’d noticed, Amy was slightly undernourished and shivering in a short skirt with a slit up the side. She’d been clutching her essay to her low-necked top and he’d wanted to tell her that she’d made him happy enough - just by appearing on his doorstep with her essay and those eyes which spoke of deprivation and held, for him, openness more beautiful in itself than any he’d seen in any student before."

She, alone amongst his students, had tried to help him but reduced to paranoia about his students, Matt has his first doubts about her intentions, despite her intimacy with him...

" 'Well, are we going to see you in them?' she smiled, still holding his shorts out like her trophy. But as he watched her lips they seemed to shape like those in a poorly dubbed film where the voice is out of synch’ with the words... reminding him now to 'eat up' all his tablets and that, then, he wouldn’t need to be 'cut up'."

The acute anxiety state kicked in again, the paranoia deepening, real love seeming to be no more than a cruel deception...

'Long night teacher,' his students seemed to chorus. 'Long is for lithe, panting tiger waitin' for you.'

Amy had slept with him but now something warm and fleshy had covered his eyes, the whole mattress had sagged deep beneath him, his body sprung with the bed... all was dark as moonless night."

Reviews :

By Laxmi Hariharan -
Author of The Destiny of Shaitan

Some unusual companions for characters but they come alive on the page.

The characters are what makes this book much more than a story about a paranoid teacher and the strange affection which grows between Matt Kreasey's teenage student, Amy, and himself when confronted by a class of students who torment their every hour and make love difficult to survive between teacher and student.

I could have read this for the observation of character alone, but the threat of conspiring students - one with a hunting knife - and the glimpse at real love that a paranoid might one day see in full with Amy made this a well worth the read.

A. Rushbrooke -

Teacher, lover or lamb to the slaughter?

Teenage students take a sensitive paranoid teacher apart like a pack of wolves. When you expect Matt would be reduced to hatred, you still see a side of him which is tender.

I wanted to find out whether Matt would survive - not so much the knife or the collective beating - but his demons and I suppose, most of all, the one chance at love with Amy that might elude him.

Bernard Forrest -

Love where you might not expect to find it.

Basically, this is a moving character-driven story of a simple love trying to blossom when hemmed in on so many sides by the ever-present threat of teacher Matt Kreasey's malcontent back-street students who daily grow more resentful of the all too sensitive man who dares to teach them poetry.

Class divides and rags to riches themes have already been done brilliantly - but to death - by other authors such as Catherine Cookson, yet while Mister Kreasey's Demon also has elements of these ever present themes, it stands out for its unforgettable observation of character.