I’m writing this at a very specific moment: it’s a couple of days before the Stranger Things finale, but we’ve had most of series 5 by now. Everyone has their pet theories about how the saga is resolved, but there’s limited time left in which to speculate. The Netflix marketing department has been in overdrive and there is merch everywhere, sometimes creative, sometimes bewildering, sometimes lazy. At the same time, we’ve seen in series 5 that the Duffer brothers are prepared to be liberal about the boundaries of canon. The play, The First Shadow, currently presented in both London and New York is as official as you can get, even if there are inconsistencies between the two productions. So I thought I would dive into one of the two ‘official’ novels that have been written for grown-ups (other YA content is also available) to see what it might add. Suspicious Minds is a prequel to the TV show, but it is set in 1969, ten years after the events of The First Shadow. It is the story of Terry Ives, the mother of Jane/Eleven and it adds extra detail and context to what occurs in the series. For that reason I would suggest that it is worth the attention of fans of the series, though it may be of limited appeal to those unfamiliar with the world of Martin Brenner.

The story sets out what happens when college student Terry Ives signs up to be a subject for medical experimentation. Together with the rest of her cohort of guinea pigs, she is alarmed by the practice and procedures of the Hawkins National Laboratory, run by a certain Martin Brenner. But when they try to pry a little deeper, they find things don’t really add up. Ives and her friends display bravery and cunning but find themselves up against a true villain.

I think I had forgotten what a real piece of work Brenner turned out to be. Matthew Modine’s portrayal is calculating enough but we give him the benefit of the doubt because we think there may be a benign motivation for his actions. We know from The First Shadow that Brenner is prepared to cause deaths for his own research purposes: in Suspicious Minds we find that his research track record is either non-existent or classified and his practices sloppy and unscientific while he acts in a way that is utterly unethical both to his research partners and also to the wider community. And yet the notebooks that Dustin finds in series 5 suggest a brilliant theoretician.

The 1960s setting provides Bond an opportunity to present a different picture of the midwest and in particular to lightly touch on issues of gender and racial discrimination and the political divisions over Vietnam. For example, students are mandated to attend a screening of Nixon’s Silent Majority speech, and light protests are met with heavy-handed retribution. It’s a useful counterpoint to the portrayal of the 1950s and 1980s that we meet on screen and stage.

Although the story of Terry is interesting in its own right, the greatest relevance of Suspicious Minds to the Stranger Things world right now is in its portrayal of Kali/Eight. Kali is five years old when she first appears (which would make her six years older than Jane/Eleven). The exploration of her character gives added detail to the horror of the childhoods endured by all of Brenner’s prisoners, and gives an added dimension to her fury.

A good prequel that fits nicely into the Stranger Things canon.