With great power at the end of your fingers comes great trouble.

Septimus feels out-of-place in his village where everyone else his age is called Garp, Darg or Smerg or Blaarg. Good, honest names that sound like you are have just swallowed something pointy or are sneezing into custard. Even his parents make him feel like a stranger. Especially his parents. Then he inherits something strange and frightening from his uncle. A Hairy Hand. It has the magical ability to find buried treasure which suits his parents (thieves by trade) down to the ground. However, instead of making his life better, it suddenly gets a lot worse. So, it is up to Sept to find out what else the Hand knows and put things right.

The Hairy Hand is a gothic adventure story with magical familiars, a Dickensian cast and jokes. It is 36,000 words for middle grade readers or slow-witted adults and is currently a standalone – although the ending leaves plenty of room for a series about a powerful boy warlock and his familiar. I loved the idea of a book about friendship in unlikely places and becoming. It inhabits a similar space to Muncle Trogg and/or Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. I see it working well as a film with the author played by Brad Pitt or that guy from One Direction.