The Lost Film.

The Lost Film is a two novella collection published by Pendragon Press. The writers involved are Stephen Bacon and Mark West – both of whom are authors whose work I’ve very much enjoyed in the past so it was with some degree of anticipation that I began reading the book. That anticipation had been building for some time, I’d first heard mention of the collaboration a good few years back on a now defunct forum where it had piqued my interest. The idea had been used to impressive effect in other books I’d read, most notably Ancient Images by Ramsey Campbell and Rough Cut by Gary McMahon so  I was keen to see if these novellas carried forward that high standard. Reassuringly, they do – they’re not perfect but they are bloody good and provide a couple of cracking reads.

First up is Stephen’s Lantern Rock, the title coming from the name of the small island off the Cornish coast which is the home of reclusive film director Lionel Rutherford. Journalist Paul Madigan travels to the island (which comes complete with its own lighthouse) to interview the director, along the way meeting, and ultimately travelling to the island with, Ellie who – it turns out – has her own agenda and reasons for meeting up with Rutherford.

The setting is suitably gothic, and this ambience is maintained with descriptions of the house in which Rutherford dwells, a residence he shares with his butler/housekeeper Jonas – who has his own mysterious past… A storm hits whilst Madigan is on the island, stranding him and Ellie and allowing him the time to uncover the deadly secrets hidden in Rutherford’s film Experiments in Darkness.

Exposure to the film unleashes forces which have lain dormant on the island, most notably in the form of Theodore Zafan, a dark magician and leader of a cult and the terrifying tall creatures which stalk the rooms and corridors of the house. The story is a slow burner, gradually building up layers of intrigue and menace and culminating in a bloody, frenzied finale. This change in tone is handled wonderfully by Stephen and the final scenes are suitably reminiscent of some classic horror films.

The Lost Film is Mark’s novella, the longer of the two and telling the story of Gabriel Bird, a private investigator hired to unearth the whereabouts of Roger Sinclair, an exploitation film maker form the 1970s who has seemingly disappeared.

His disappearance coincided with the making of what Sinclair regarded as his magnum opus, Terrafly – a film so terrifying it had the power to drive those who viewed it mad. As Bird begins his investigation, clips from this lost film begin to appear on the internet…

Mark’s extensive knowledge – and love of – films is apparent all throughout this novella and his references to characters and films (both real and imaginary) add layers of verisimilitude to the story. Bird’s investigations bring him into contact with a host of beautifully realised characters and the plot twists and turns. The whole “just Google it” hurdle to any investigation story is leapt with room to spare and Gabriel has to do some proper legwork to uncover exactly what is going on.

What is going on is one of the best ideas I’ve read in quite some time. No spoilers obviously but the concept of the Monochromatics – characters seen in black and white in colour film – is a brilliant one, as is their explanation. There’s many a nod to Hjortsberg’s Falling Angel (and, of course, its film adaptation Angel Heart) but also to Wim Wenders’ classic Wings of Desire, the novella providing a very dark twist on the latter.

My only issue with the story is the introduction of a lost diary. Exposition’s always tricky and the device of the hidden journal is a handy get out of jail card but I felt in this instance it wasn’t necessary. Gabriel’s journey takes him to the place where all this explanation occurs anyway and I think having the expository dialogue that’s in the journal in a scene with Gabriel himself would have made an even more powerful ending to the story. Mark says in his notes at the end of the book that the idea grew from a single line - and it’s a great line. It’s just a shame that it’s hidden in the diary extract.

This criticism aside, I think this novella is one of the best things Mark has written. The two stories work extremely well alongside each other too – and the authors have cleverly cross-referenced each other very effectively. Unfortunately there’s a typo count that just edges into the “this is annoying” category but The Lost Film is a great example of genre writing, both stories are gripping, high-concept and scary – which is pretty much a perfect combination. It’s a book I highly recommend and you can buy it direct from the publisher.

Lost Girl

Lost Girl is the new novel from Adam Nevill and is published by Pan Macmillan. Since his debut novel, Banquet for the Damned, published in 2008 Adam has steadily built up a reputation as a writer of some of the most terrifying stories ever committed to paper. The imagery he creates on the pages of his books is as affecting as anything seen in a horror film but he manages to create the effect without the benefit of cinematic techniques, crashing chords and jump cuts – rather painting those images in the reader’s mind with elegant prose, planting them in the subconscious, conjuring up scenes that will haunt for years to come. There’s a scene in Adam’s Last Days that still genuinely creeps me out three years after reading it for the first time.

It takes real skill as a writer to properly scare a reader but Adam has it in abundance, no one is better at conjuring up the shadowy entities that scuttle in the darkness, that are barely glimpsed from the corner of an eye. Having recovered from last year’s tour de force of terror which was No One Gets Out Alive, it was with much anticipation that I awaited the publication of Adam’s next book, curious as to what horrors he would be inflicting on us this time around.

So here it is, Lost Girl, a novel which, it has to be said, marks somewhat of a change in direction for the author. The novel displays a shift from the overt horror of Adam’s previous novel towards more of a thriller – albeit one with a Sci-Fi vibe to it, set as it is in the future, a time when the impact of Global Warming is manifesting itself in the form of massive environmental breakdown with attendant mass migrations as people flee those countries where temperatures are too high to sustain life. Throw in an outbreak of a deadly virus and what you have is a truly apocalyptic vision – one which is perfectly, and plausibly, realised.

A disappointment then? No dark terrors to haunt the psyche?

Absolutely not. This is an outstanding novel and one which confirms Adam Nevill as a great writer, not “just” a great writer of horror fiction. It’s been his writing style, as much as the horrors on display that have made his books such a joy to read. There’s a slight change noticeable in Lost Girl though, perhaps a more “literary” feel to the writing. It’s distinctive prose, evocative and poetic, take for example these descriptions:

Robert rose up from white bed sheets: a scrawny upper body in the bundling of pyjamas, the turkey neck thrusting, salt-whiskered chin jutting, his eyes slit mean.

And later:

… had been born partially stricken by so many solvents of the heart, which would readily burst into flame and char the imagined future times when all could be normal, or manageable.

There’s beauty in the words and their phrasing. Not so much in what they describe however…

The plot revolves around the abduction of a child and the father’s attempts to track down and rescue her – describing the lengths he goes to in order to achieve those aims, charting the breakdown of his character, mirroring as it does the breakdown of society all around him. Some very dark things happen in this book – and most of them are done by the father, the “hero” of the story. He is never named, is referred to throughout simply as “the father”. Whereas at first this may seem a distancing technique it actually works extremely well. By not giving his name, the character is defined by what he is rather than who and by dint the whole notion of what it means to be a father is put under the microscope. How far would a father go to save his child is the question posed here and it’s a though-provoking but at the same time disturbing  read that results – the reader wants the father to succeed but at the same time will be horrified by what he does to achieve that success.

The societal breakdown in which he finds himself means that there is little or no support from the police and so it’s under his own steam that the father journeys through the dark underbelly of human existence to find his daughter (albeit with some help from anonymous contacts who provide some guidance via telephone).

The horror element in Lost Girl is far less overt than in Adam’s previous novels but it is there in the shape of King Death, a gang with connections to The Church of Last Days, introduced slowly and subtly with graffitied images and paintings in cellars but growing to full fruition in a marvellous chapter describing the father’s journey through a chapel and in which an important character is introduced. It's a wonderful piece of writing, terrifying in its imagery and the narrative twists it provides.

Lost Girl is an outstanding novel, a gripping, terrifying read from an author who never fails to deliver. It’s a book that ably demonstrates that the horrors that arise from human nature itself are just as terrifying as those of a supernatural nature. It’s a novel I highly recommend.

Nightscript 1.

It was a blow, last year, to the world of weird fiction when Michael Kelly announced that Shadows & Tall Trees Volume 6 was to be the last in the series. The journal had, since its inception, been a source of fine writing - containing literary tales of strange, unsettling fiction of the highest quality. However, one of the authors featured in that final volume (and whose story Vrangr was one of its highlights) has come to the rescue of connoisseurs of literary horror by producing his own volume of weird fiction, Nightscript 1 - a book containing twenty - yes twenty - beautifully written stories which undoubtedly would have graced the pages of S&TT had it still been in existence.
The writing throughout is of the highest quality and C M has done a great job in selecting the stories to be included. A further link to S&TT comes with the inclusion of A Quiet Axe by Michael Kelly himself, the shortest story in the collection - more of a prose poem truth to tell - but which loses none of its impact as a result of the low word count. With so many stories included, it would be impossible to review all of them individually and do them justice, suffice to say that there isn't a poor one among them. The risk with having so many tales in one volume is that there will be "fillers" but that most assuredly is not the case with Nightscript 1, all of the stories contained within have earned their place, all are of (as previously alluded to) the highest quality.
The subject matter of the stories varies widely but none are anything less than truly weird. There's reincarnation and lycanthropy, restless spirits and things which creep in the shadows. My own personal highlights were Damien Angelica Walters' Tooth, Tongue and Claw which provides an alternative take on the Beauty and the Beast legend (and which serves as a companion piece to her marvellous collection Sing Me Your Scars) along with Ralph Robert Moore's Learning Not to Smile, a typically imaginative - and extremely strange - story which has much to say about medical (and dental) care in America and culminates in a truly jaw-dropping conclusion. Another favourite was David Surface's The Sound That the World Makes, a slow-burner of a tale that leads to an ending which still gives me shivers just thinking about it.
Nightscript 1 is a worthy heir to Shadows & Tall Trees - C M has taken the mantle and run with it, producing an excellent book containing some of the best writing you'll come across this year. It's a book I recommend highly that you should purchase - which you can do here.

The Last Outpost.

The Last Outpost is the new novel by Rich Hawkins and is the sequel to The Last Plague. Both books are published by Crowded Quarantine Publications.. I read The Last Plague having been introduced to Rich’s writing via his novella Black Star Black Sun and thoroughly enjoyed this particular take on the apocalypse, an end of the world scenario which merged Lovecraft and zombie tropes in spectacular fashion, producing a novel which has rightly been nominated for a British Fantasy award.

The first novel described the apocalypse itself, the moment when (possibly) the stars were right and the titular plague ravaged humanity, turning its victims into ravening hordes of monsters – the “infected” – human beings metamorphosed into horrifying shapes and forms with an insatiable blood-lust. Although focussing in on a small group of characters, the novel was epic in scale, full of marvellously executed set-pieces and horrifying imagery.

The Last Outpost takes up the story not long after the events of the first book are over and as such, is more concerned with the aftermath of the plague. Whilst the first book was an action-packed rollercoaster ride (© reviewer’s clichés) this is a more sedate piece of writing, introspective even, almost a stream of consciousness from the character of Royce, a survivor of the plague, now wandering alone through the ravaged countryside.

There’s much existential angst going on here, with Royce having to come to terms with the new world he finds himself in as well as the death of his wife and daughter. This is bleak stuff but credit is due to Rich for taking this path and also for the quality of the writing on display here. In effect, it’s an extended soliloquy but one that’s full of real emotion, the writing spot-on, poetic in parts.

The bleakness conveyed in Royce’s inner monologue draws favourable comparison to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road conjuring up similar feelings of desolation and despair as that classic book and, like The Road, an encounter with other survivors provides a pivotal moment in the book. There’s a change in tone about halfway through The Last Outpost where a set-piece within a house provides one of the most intense passages of horror writing I’ve come across in a while.

The second half of the book provides more action and introduces more characters but the overarching feeling of despair is never lost, lurks constantly in the background. The title of the book comes from rumours of a settlement of survivors on the other side of the North Sea, the journey towards which provides the main narrative thrust of the story but it’s the characters who count here, Royce himself, George – an elderly man he meets on the way and Amy, pregnant and so fighting for the survival of her unborn child as well as her own.

It’s the journey that’s important though, not the destination and quite a journey it is too. Rich has created an entirely believable world here, one in which the horrors come from not only the infected, and the mighty Titans which swoop through the skies above but from the darkness that lies within all of us. The book does however end on a note of optimism, hope even – made even more profound by the events leading up to (and especially immediately before) it.

The second of a trilogy is always regarded as the darkest and that’s certainly the case here. Bleak and nihilistic but beautifully written The Last Outpost is a book I highly recommend and I look forward with great anticipation to whatever happens next…

A Head Full of Ghosts.

A Head Full of Ghosts is the new novel by Paul Tremblay. It’s the first time I’ve encountered his writing but on the basis of this novel it won’t be the last. Until Adam Nevill came along, the only book that really scared me was The Exorcist (to say nothing of the film which I’ve watched a grand total of one and a half times, giving up on my second attempt). I can hear the sniggering from younger readers at that statement who – if generalised impressions are to be believed – now regard the movie as a comedy with crap effects. They’re wrong. It’s a classic and anyone not terrified by it has something lacking in their psyche, or doesn’t have a soul.

Given my experience with this classic of demonic possession, (the lights actually flickered at one point when I was reading the book. True story) it was with a little trepidation that I approached this novel, especially after having seen online comments about it, and how scary it is given that it shares that subject matter with William Peter Blatty’s classic.

So, is it as scary as everyone says?

Oh yes.

The story concerns the Barretts, a New England family, whose eldest daughter Marjorie begins to display what are apparently signs of demonic possession. With the medical profession unable to provide any help, John – the girl’s increasingly desperate father, contacts the church, convincing them that an exorcism is required to save his daughter. The church agree but the story is further complicated by the family’s decision to have their story televised in a weekly “reality” TV show…

On the face of it then, nothing outstandingly original – just your average, run-of-the-mill young girl possessed by demon kind of thing.

Except no. This is an extremely cleverly constructed piece of writing which takes the central conceit and turns it into what I regard as one of the finest pieces of post-modern writing I’ve seen. Seriously, if anyone is teaching post-modernism as an art form then this book should be on the curriculum.

Fractured narrative? Check. Metafiction? Check. Deconstruction of tropes and themes? Check. Simulacra? Oh yes. The opening chapters of this book are deeply unsettling and scary, making full  use of the imagery and trademarks of every demonic possession book/film there have been. Familiar yes, but still scary. And it’s precisely this familiarity that the book plays on, cleverly lulling the reader into accepting them, enjoying them – getting scared by them – and then meticulously pulling them apart, casting doubts as to their veracity, persuading the reader that it’s all a hoax.

The book is written in first person, narrated by Merry, the younger daughter who is telling her story to a writer some fifteen years after the events. Cue unreliable narrator. The ambiguity about what actually happened is added to by the inclusion of blog extracts from “The Last Final Girl” who dissects every episode of the TV show (The Possession) pointing out where and how all the fakery was achieved… The identity of the blogger is revealed about halfway into the book and it’s a masterstroke by the author, forcing the reader to read the extracts in a whole new context.

This is a brilliant book, one of the best I’ve read for some time. It succeeds on very level, emotionally and intellectually. I could ramble on for hours about how clever it is but will restrain myself here for fear of spoilers. Suffice to say, I highly recommend that you should read A Head Full of Ghosts, which you can do by buying it here.

PS No lights flickered during the reading of this book.

A window did fly open by itself though.

Albion Fay

Albion Fay is the new novella by Mark Morris and is published by Spectral Press. It begins with a funeral, pretty much setting the tone for everything which follows and introduces us to Frank, the first-person narrator of the story. There’s a great deal of skilful character development here, painting a picture of a man hiding from the world, paranoid and over-analytical of everything – and everyone – around him. This, of course, sets up the narrative of the story wonderfully, planting the question in the readers’ minds of how Frank came to be this way.

What follows is a fractured narrative that jumps backwards and forwards in time – a technique that mirrors the broken nature of Frank’s family; sister Angie, loving mother Pat and father George whose first scene in the book presents him as a short tempered bully, characteristics that develop along with the story until he becomes the catalyst for the life changing events which follow.

George is a catalyst but so too are events at Albion Fay itself, the house which is to be the family’s holiday home for a week. The caves in the woods which surround the house allow the introduction of a supernatural element to the story but this is done in a subtle way, the first person perspective – which brings with it all the baggage of unreliability – means that just the right amount of ambiguity is brought to the narrative, these supernatural elements enhancing rather than overwhelming it.

As Adam Nevill’s thorough and detailed introduction to the book indicates, this is a story about loss and perhaps the greatest loss of all here is of the childhood innocence of Frank and Angie. The story goes to some very dark places but the writing is so assured and confident that the tragic events which unfold really do shock and aren’t gratuitous. Albion Fay is a Greek tragedy – although a very British one. (Yes, the name of the house – and book – is a clever one). It’s a brilliant example of quiet, understated writing that delivers its horrors efficiently and extremely effectively. There are similarities here – in terms of general themes – to Mark’s previous novella It Sustains, but both are prime examples of intelligent, literary horror and evidence of an author pretty much at the top of his game.

I thoroughly recommend Albion Fay and you can buy it here.

The Last Bus.

Ah, the joys of travelling on public transport – how shall I list them? In less time than it would take to list the horrors thereof, truth to tell. Aside from the regular unreliability, the noise and smell, the heaters that only seem to work during the hottest summer days plus many other assaults on the physical being, the practice brings with it its own peculiar array of psychological trauma, turning even the most mild-mannered individuals into judgemental, territorial and paranoid sociopaths. The tension of waiting in a queue, wondering if there’s going to be a seat available – preferably a double seat because the thought of having to sit next to someone else is unbearable. And then, when you’re securely in situ, the apprehension that sets in every time the bus stops and someone gets on that they’ll sit next to you, disrupt your personal space, the way you deliberately avoid eye contact with them, the familiar mantra running through your head as they make their way along the bus “don’t, don’t don’t don’t don’t…” invariably terminated by a heartfelt bastard! as they do. This immediately followed by the feelings of intense hatred towards those other passengers who have sat on the outside of the double seat, or put their bags there to prevent infiltration. Bastards.

Of course, that could just be me.

Horrors indeed, but nothing in comparison to those endured by the passengers on Paul M Feeney’s The Last Bus, a novella published by Crowded Quarantine Publications. Despite the title, the bus is actually one of the first of the day, transporting a motley bunch of commuters to an unnamed city. An explosion within the city initiates a series of events that turn what should have been an ordinary day into an extraordinary one.

The book is an homage to B-movies and it uses a well-worn trope of those films in bringing together a disparate group of individuals and watches how they cope with the extreme events happening around them.

The characters on the bus are, to some extent – although in keeping with the B-movie origins of the tale – stereotypes but the author takes great pleasure in subverting them allowing for some unexpected twists and turns. It’s a strength of the book that time is taken to develop these characters so that you will either be rooting for or wishing a terrible death on them.

There are terrible deaths, gleefully devised and described and most of these occur within “interludes” – breaks from the main narrative set on the bus, describing, and fleshing out, what is happening in the world outside. Gore abounds here – as do in-jokes, the names of the victims will be instantly recognisable to anyone who spends time in the world of horror fiction. My own personal jury is out on this device – it did make me smile but at the same time took me out of the narrative.

The story which unfolds in an epic one but the approach taken – focussing on a small group of individuals – makes it perfect for novella length. As mentioned earlier, it’s basically a B-movie and they always worked (and so, by dint, does the novella) because they were short and over long before rational thought had a chance to kick in and tricky questions about logic and realism had an opportunity to rear their heads. This could easily have been a novel but I’m glad it isn’t – it’s a quick read and the narrative cracks along at a fast pace and it’s all the more enjoyable for that.

My only encounter with Paul’s work prior to The Last Bus was The Weight of the Ocean. That was a deeply moving, personal piece of writing – sad and melancholic. It’s fair to say that his new novella is about as far removed from that as you can get which only goes to prove that he’s versatile, as well as gifted, as a writer.

I really enjoyed The Last Bus and recommend that you should buy it – which you can do directly from the publishers..