Review – Deity by Matt Wesolowski

A shamed pop star A devastating fire Six witnesses Six stories Which one is true?When pop megastar Zach Crystal dies in a fire at his remote mansion, his mysterious demise rips open the bitter divide between those who adored his music and his endless charity work, and those who viewed him as a despicable predator, who manipulated and abused young and vulnerable girls.Online journalist, Scott King, whose Six Stories podcasts have become an internet sensation, investigates the accusations of sexual abuse and murder that were levelled at Crystal before he died. But as Scott begins to ask questions and rake over old graves, some startling inconsistencies emerge: Was the fire at Crystal’s remote home really an accident? Are reports of a haunting really true? Why was he never officially charged? Dark, chillingly topical and deeply thought-provoking, Deity is both an explosive thriller and a startling look at how heroes can fall from grace and why we turn a blind eye to even the most heinous of crimes…

Review

Often when a series of novels has been running for a while, especially with similar themes, they can become predictable, feel sluggish when you’re reading them! Yet Matt Wesolowski’s Six Stories Series, remains bold, exciting and original, because the author is a master storyteller, who always delivers compelling tales, that are absurdly hard to turn away from!

In Deity Matt Wesolowski delivers a taunt tale, that still haunts my mind days after finishing it! Zach Crystal dies in his mansion, haunted by accusations of the abuse young vulnerable girls. Those that adore him still refuse to believe the accusations and his alleged victims still speak out. Who is right? Is Zach Crystal a monster or misunderstood angel? Into this cauldron of emotions, accusations and counter accusations, comes Scott King, on-line reporter and creator of the Six Stories podcasts, determined to unravel the enigma and in doing so, becomes embroiled in a dark tale of secrets, lies and misunderstandings.

Why it works is simply that Matt’s writing style creates layers of tension and misdirection which mean that you never know, or at least I didn’t, the truth behind the stories until he decides to unveil it to you, Each interview is given room to breath and seep into your mind and by being contained within individual podcasts, allows the voice of the character to be heard distinctly by the reader. Particularly powerful in this tale, because each of Zach Crystals supporters and detractors. are so utterly believable that I flopped back and forth between feeling convinced of his guilt and then persuaded I had been too judgemental. He made each witness so credible that you doubt not just your own judgment, but that of the people Scott King is interviewing.

Now Deity is not just any ordinary thriller, its is genuinely chilling. At its heart is a darkness that pervades the story like mist enveloping the reader. I was left with the unsettling thought that the evil he is wring about might not actually be human. The scenes in the forest that wrap around the popstars home act like a barrier against the outside world and the writing leaves you wondering, if they are actually protecting the world from an evil within Zach Crystals home, or he is protecting those he draws to him like a magnet, from the nightmare living in the darkness. I may never look at forests in the same way again! I certainly know of no other writer that could write a tale, that takes it’s origin from real life cases of suspected abuse and create a well balanced, deeply disturbing and yet sensitive story, that left me haunted, disturbed and yet utterly transfixed.

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About the author

Matt Wesolowski is an author from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in the UK. He is an English tutor for young people in care. Matt started his writing career in horror, and his short horror fiction has been published in numerous UK- an US-based anthologies such as Midnight Movie Creature, Selfies from the End of the World, Cold Iron and many more. His novella, The Black Land, a horror story set on the Northumberland coast, was published in 2013. Matt was a winner of the Pitch Perfect competition at Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Festival in 2015. His debut thriller, Six Stories, was a bestseller in the USA, Canada, the UK and Australia, and a WH Smith Fresh Talent pick, and TV rights were sold to a major Hollywood studio. A prequel, Hydra, was published in 2018 and became an international bestseller, Changeling (2019) and Beast (2020) soon followed suit.

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