Ramsey Campbell

A collection of the author's short fiction ranging from his early efforts in the early 1960s to mature work of the early 1980s when this collection was published. The earlier, very Lovecraft influenced, stories are rather clumsy pastiches and didn't really hold my interest, but the later work where the name checking of standard Lovecraft entities recedes into the background and only minor references are made, such as to books from the Mythos which people come across, are much more successful.

The final story in the book, 'The Voice of the Beach', is influenced by Algernon Blackwood's 'The Willows' as Campbell acknowledges in his introduction to the collection where he says that he attempted in it to return to the aims of Lovecraft who was a great admirer of Blackwood's story. As in the best of Campbell's fiction, it is unsettling and disturbing, with things only half seen or sensed providing the chills. Mainly due to such later tales, my rating is raised to a respectable 3 stars.… (mer)

Rather bleak even for a novel by this author, this deals with the plight of literary agent, Barbara, whose husband was killed while working abroad. His death brought on labour, but she and her daughter survived and all seemed well, until she decided to go back to work in London - and her daughter was snatched from nursery while in the care of others. The woman running the nursery fetches a psychic round against Barbara's wishes while the police are still searching, and the woman has just told Barbara that her daughter is gifted but those who have her must be prevented from corrupting that, when a policeman arrives. A child's body, which cannot be identified due to gunshot wounds, has been found. (The book was written in the late 1980s or so, therefore there is no DNA testing which could perhaps prove otherwise).

Nine years later Barbara is trying to rebuild her life and has a tenuous relationship with a man who is divorced but trying to see his daughter despite the mother's opposition, when she starts to receive phone calls from a girl who claims to be her daughter, who would be around 13. And so starts a wild goose chase where Barbara is sent from place to place, even to Scotland, in order to meet her daughter who somehow is never at the hinted at locations. Meanwhile, others who are drawn into Barbara's quest find they have a very short life expectancy.

The book begins with a prologue where a man visits a murderer on death row in the 1940s, posing as a psychiatrist, in order to question him on why he carried out a barbaric torture and murder of his victim. Eventually it is revealed that this man was the founder of a cult, one built on the idea of torture and murder in order to somehow feed a force from beyond. This is as far as the slightly Lovecraftian/Cthulhu Mythos parallel goes, but Barbara comes to believe that this cult has her daughter and there is a deadline to rescue her, as children are fully initiated into the cult at age 13.

The atmosphere of the story is well conveyed: urban decay, noise pollution, filth and rubbish abound and are well evoked. The cult thrives in such settings. However the ending is distinctly weak: I found it unconvincing firstly that the dead father manages to manifest to his daughter in time to reawaken her conscience when he has failed to do so for the past 9 years and secondly that the daughter does completely change her mind so conveniently and spectacularly. So on balance I can only rate this as an 'OK' at 2 stars.… (mer)

This early novel of the author's is an exploration mainly of one character's delusions and homophobia, which lead him into murder. Given his hallucinations, which include the idea that the people on TV are watching him and the radio is either passing coded messages or listening to him, it is clear that his mental state is due to the illness known as paranoid schizophrenia. The general decay of the urban setting, and the claustrophobia of being trapped on a soul-less high rise housing estate, together with a dysfunctional upbringing - Horridge's drunken father was directly responsible for the accident which left Horridge with a lifelong problem with his leg - has tipped the character over the edge, as gradually becomes clear, and after reading about some well publicised murders, his delusions start to coallesce around the unfortunate inhabitants of an older house, some distance from the housing estate, which has been divided into flats.

Most of the novel is told from Horridge's point of view though the viewpoints of the various people he ends up stalking - and worse - are also utilised. Most of these are sympathetic characters which makes their fate all the more disturbing. There are some truly horrible images - a metal bird in particular - and, as usual with this author, the characters stumble into peril after mutual misunderstandings and failures to communicate over a slow but inexorable build-up.

The use of schizophrenia and its disordered thinking as the motive force for a serial killer made a good change from the usual ice cold sociopath. Possibly this was influenced by the author's own life, given the account in this edition - I read an abridged/edited version of the novel some years ago, but this restores the original text and a previously excised chapter, adding also a short story and an introduction where the author describes his dysfunctional upbringing to which he credits his ability to write disturbing fiction. That gave an interesting insight into not only this book, but others, such as Obsession which I read recently, where the mother of one of the characters disintegrates mentally due to a form of senile dementia. The only thing I wasn't keen on about the present book was the character of Peter, although I can see, especially from the introduction, that he is supposed to be an annoying drug besotted layabout, but for that reason I rate this as 4 stars.… (mer)

The premise of this novel is simple: a group of four teenagers, all with what seem insurmountable problems in their home life, fill out and sign forms which have been sent anonymously to one of them - from someone who claims to be able to solve their most pressing problems in return for something they do not value. Then those forms are snatched by the wind and blown out to sea, and soon afterwards events occur which seem to be in direct relation to the problem they each described. The trouble is, in some cases that solution is fairly horrible - especially in the case of Peter's slightly senile grandmother.

Move forward 25 years to the, in some cases, unsatisfactory adult life each of them has built and the problems start coming home to roost - because the things they didn't care about at the time, such as reputation or success in business, start to be destroyed. There is a creepy atmosphere to all this, although the only overt supernatural element is the return of Peter's grandmother who is bent on revenge. The most horrific part of the story is probably the portrayal of senile dementia/Alzheimers in the character of the mother who sets about systematically destroying her daughter's reputation as a doctor and even trying to get her put into jail for drug dealing (which she is not doing). The story does succeed in creating sympathy for at least three of the four, although I found some difficulty relating to Peter who is the most damaged of the grown characters. For that and the occasionally too over the top aspects I would rate this story as 4 star.… (mer)