The memoirs of a National Enquirer journalist, I picked up Tabloid Man and the Baffling Chair of Death on the understanding it was a thoroughly Fortean book. Instead, Bannister only occasionally touches on the bizarre (it feels like he made the Baffling Chair of Death front and centre as a sales gimmick; it's actually one of the less interesting sections), and is instead a potted history of his time in journalism, focussing on the Enquirer, the odd, sometime Fortean, stories he covered and the Enquirer's eccentric owner, Gene Pope.

There is some entertaining passages, mostly around the colourful people he had to deal with but there appears to be some padding as well, including a section of unpublished stories the author thought highly of but probably could have remained so. ( )