Jessica Bannister
Jessica Bannister is the main heroine in the Bastei booklet series The Uncanny Adventures of Jessica Bannister , which appeared from 1996 to 2000. It was a series of magazines from the romantic thriller genre, in which scary stories are told without foregoing aspects of love and romance.
History of the series
The series started at the end of 1996 as a sub-series of the Midnight Roman series (this series uses the same stylistic devices of the genre, but only tells individual adventures without recurring or fixed characters). Jessica Bannister published 13 adventures every four weeks. Due to the great success (and probably also due to the plan to establish another independent series in the novel booklet sector), the series was decoupled from the Midnight novel in November 1997 and continued as an independent format under the title The uncanny adventures of Jessica Bannister . The series had to be discontinued after 44 weeks because the sales figures fell short of the publisher's expectations. In order not to have to part with it entirely, the series was quickly reintegrated into the midnight novel and continued to be written for two years. A total of 81 Bannister novels were published between 1996 and 2000.
The series has been reissued since the beginning of June 2016, but discontinued again in January 2018 after 44 volumes.
Content and figure constellation
The series had its origins in a very loving constellation of characters:
Jessica Bannister works as a tabloid journalist for the fictional London City Observer and specializes in cases of supernatural character. Together with her colleague and buddy, photographer Jim Brodie, she researches the cases and then reports on them.
Jessica, who lost her parents as a little girl, grows up with her great aunt, Beverley Gormic (Aunt Bell). Since the death of her parents, the girl has suffered from a supernatural gift. In visions she can on the one hand foresee future events, but on the other hand also travel (mentally) into the past.
The play of the characters turned out to be refreshing, but the authors soon decided to change it. Jessica was given a boyfriend so that she wouldn't have to fall in love with every issue: the mysterious Tom Howard, whom she later even married. The sympathetic character of Jim Brodie fell into oblivion and after he was kidnapped by a storm witch and had not been integrated into the novel for a long time, he degenerated into a marginal figure of no great importance.
In the end, Aunt Bell's missing husband, Franklin Gormic, also returned. That was probably the end of the series. In the last volume, Jessica found out that she is pregnant and will have twins. A happy ending.
The main characters
- Jessica Bannister, reporter for the London City Observer
- Jim Brodie, photographer for the London City Observer , Jessica's best friend
- Beverley "Aunt Bell" Gormic, Jessica's great aunt and foster mother
- Franclin Gormic, Beverley's lost, finally returned husband
- Martin T. Stone, editor-in-chief of the London City Observer , Jessica's fatherly friend
- Tom Howard, reporter for the London City Observer , later Jessica's husband and father of her children
- Dr. Flesh, Jessica's arch enemy
- Ashley Brown, Jessica's old childhood sweetheart
The authors and covers
All novels were published under the publisher's collective pseudonym Janet Farell , behind whom a number of authors stood, including the amulet author Jan Gardemann and Andreas Schmidt, who is now known as the author of crime novels. The main author of the series was Alfred Bekker . As editor and proofreader, Peter Thannisch was mainly responsible for large parts of the overall conception of the series.
The cover pictures for the stand-alone series were in most cases drawn by the Spanish artist José Ma Espinosa . Archival material was used for the Bannister novels in the Midnight Novel.
The novels
| No. | tape | title | date |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | MR 578 | At night when you call the ghosts | December 3, 1996 |
| 02 | MR 582 | The secret of the "black crow" | 12/30/1996 |
| 03 | MR 586 | The Magician's Legacy | 01/28/1997 |
| 04 | MR 590 | The Castle of the Temple Knights | 02/25/1997 |
| 05 | MR 594 | Where the wolves howl ... | 03/25/1997 |
| 06 | MR 598 | In the snake's paradise | 04/22/1997 |
| 07 | MR 602 | Jessica and the Ghost Monk | 05/20/1997 |
| 08 | MR 606 | The cursed of the seas | 06/17/1997 |
| 09 | MR 610 | The magician's haunted house | 07/15/1997 |
| 10 | MR 614 | The stone messengers of death | 08/12/1997 |
| 11 | MR 618 | The island of ghosts | 09/09/1997 |
| 12 | MR 622 | Under the spell of the green phantom | 07/10/1997 |
| 13 | MR 626 | The cold breath of death | 11/04/1997 |
| 14th | JB 01 | She foresaw her death | 11/18/1997 |
| 15th | JB 02 | The castle of the lost women | 11/25/1997 |
| 16 | JB 03 | The curse of the beautiful Indian woman | 12/02/1997 |
| 17th | JB 04 | The black monk of vengeance | 12/09/1997 |
| 18th | JB 05 | Night of horror in Tangier | 12/16/1997 |
| 19th | JB 06 | The temple of infinity | December 23, 1997 |
| 20th | JB 07 | The spirits from Teufelsmoor | 12/30/1997 |
| 21st | JB 08 | The monastery of horror | 01/06/1998 |
| 22nd | JB 09 | The spirit of Ashley Brown | 01/13/1998 |
| 23 | JB 10 | Duel of the Ghosts | 01/20/1998 |
| 24 | JB 11 | In the palace of the vampire prince | 01/27/1998 |
| 25th | JB 12 | Lady Blanchard's cabinet | 02/03/1998 |
| 26th | JB 13 | The tomb of shadows | 02/10/1998 |
| 27 | JB 14 | The magic eye | 02/17/1998 |
| 28 | JB 15 | Horror lives on Bladwil Castle | 02/24/1998 |
| 29 | JB 16 | Cruise to the afterlife | 03/03/1998 |
| 30th | JB 17 | Haunted old Gormic mansion | 03/10/1998 |
| 31 | JB 18 | Me and the gas light killer | 03/17/1998 |
| 32 | JB 19 | The house of the spiders | March 24, 1998 |
| 33 | JB 20 | The lake of fear | March 31, 1998 |
| 34 | JB 21 | Ghost haunted Nice | 04/07/1998 |
| 35 | JB 22 | The ghost in the waxworks cabinet | 04/14/1998 |
| 36 | JB 23 | The secret of the Flammenburg | 04/21/1998 |
| 37 | JB 24 | The demon's castle | 04/28/1998 |
| 38 | JB 25 | I was looking for the witch's treasure | 05/05/1998 |
| 39 | JB 26 | The curse of the ghost knight | 05/12/1998 |
| 40 | JB 27 | The castle of the swans | 05/19/1998 |
| 41 | JB 28 | A devil named Jessica | 05/26/1998 |
| 42 | JB 29 | I loved don Juan | 06/02/1998 |
| 43 | JB 30 | The image of the cruel Florence | 06/09/1998 |
| 44 | JB 31 | The eternal night | 06/16/1998 |
| 45 | JB 32 | The Sinister of Gilford Castle | 06/23/1998 |
| 46 | JB 33 | The girl who called the dead | 06/30/1998 |
| 47 | JB 34 | The horror of Frankenstein Castle | 07/07/1998 |
| 48 | JB 35 | Jessica's voodoo wedding | 07/14/1998 |
| 49 | JB 36 | Lady Blanchard's revenge | 07/21/1998 |
| 50 | JB 37 | When the ghost carriage comes at night ... | 07/28/1998 |
| 51 | JB 38 | Dread trip on the "Titanic" | 08/04/1998 |
| 52 | JB 39 | Under the spell of ghost masks (1) | 08/11/1998 |
| 53 | JB 40 | In the jungle of fear (2) | 08/18/1998 |
| 54 | JB 41 | When night falls in Blackhill ... | 08/25/1998 |
| 55 | JB 42 | Jessica and the ghost children | 09/01/1998 |
| 56 | JB 43 | Death came with the hearse | 09/08/1998 |
| 57 | JB 44 | The forest of the cursed | 09/15/1998 |
| 58 | MR 671 | The storm witch | 09/22/1998 |
| 59 | MR 675 | The cave of the ghost tigers | 10/20/1998 |
| 60 | MR 679 | Return from the cool grave | 11/17/1998 |
| 61 | MR 683 | Horror fair | December 15, 1998 |
| 62 | MR 687 | Prisoners of the pale lady | 01/12/1999 |
| 63 | MR 691 | Castle of Lost Souls | 02/09/1999 |
| 64 | MR 695 | Lord Blackwood's dark secret | 03/09/1999 |
| 65 | MR 699 | Isle of the Undead | 04/06/1999 |
| 66 | MR 703 | Under the spell of the black countess | 05/04/1999 |
| 67 | MR 707 | The werewolf of Dartmoor | 06/01/1999 |
| 68 | MR 711 | ... and death lives in the cellar | 06/29/1999 |
| 69 | MR 715 | The druid's castle | 07/27/1999 |
| 70 | MR 719 | Under the spell of the ice demons | 08/24/1999 |
| 71 | MR 723 | Jungle of the Damned | 09/21/1999 |
| 72 | MR 727 | The Lord of Shadows | 10/19/1999 |
| 73 | MR 731 | The beasts from the hell swamp | 11/16/1999 |
| 74 | MR 735 | The millennium | 12/14/1999 |
| 75 | MR 739 | Jessica and the ghost ship | January 11, 2000 |
| 76 | MR 743 | The spirit of Jim Brodie | 02/08/2000 |
| 77 | MR 747 | The nameless abbot | 07.03.2000 |
| 78 | MR 751 | When ghosts rule you | 04/04/2000 |
| 79 | MR 755 | The temple of lost souls | 05/02/2000 |
| 80 | MR 759 | A terrible dream on the Amazon | 05/30/2000 |
| 81 | MR 763 | The wolf witch from Strachan Manor | 06/27/2000 |
Follow-up and parallel series at Bastei
While Jessica Bannister ran as an independent series, the publisher released a new sub- series within the midnight novel : Julia Preston . With the reintegration of the Bannister series in autumn 1998, however, it was deleted without replacement. A total of 13 episodes appeared under the author's pseudonym Rebecca Arquette .
In 2001, the midnight novel was discontinued after 16 years. In 2003 Bastei-Verlag tried to bring the genre back to life. The series of magazines Puzzling Rebecca was strikingly reminiscent of Jessica Bannister . The parallels in the figure constellation and the story drawing suggested that actions that were once conceived would simply be rewritten for the new series. After 21 episodes, the series was withdrawn from the market.
Since then there has been no new series with a romantic thriller orientation in the Bastei program ; only at the end of 2007 was the less successful series of GeisterStunde published , in which midnight novels were published for the second time (15 volumes).