On the occasion of her 50th birthday, single and put-upon Annie McMahon discovers a strange series of lumps in the hollow of her throat. Already battered by feelings of increasing insignificance, Annie fears that cancer is about to end her life before it actually begins. Annie’s frustration is amplified by her twin sister Julia; newly-promoted at work, married to a wealthy husband and with a gifted child.

When Annie is forced into a sideways career move, she finds herself researching the lives of local historic women. The escape from her toxic office is a welcome respite. But Annie’s physical woes and lack of self-worth isn’t everything. She has also started having intrusive thoughts; a voice in her head, authoritative and defiant. Her doctor dismisses this as merely symptoms of the menopause, ushering her away with pamphlets on HRT.

She fears her sanity has abandoned her completely when she vomits up a black crow. The voice in her head is growing in stature, her body feeling like it is no longer her own. She forces herself to concentrate on her research, becoming captivated by Marie Rua O’Neill – otherwise known as Red Mary of Lemanagh – who saw off 25 husbands and defied the patriarchy of the 17th century. As Annie’s inner voice grows in volume, she finds herself becoming liberated by its message…

The superb They Shut Me Up is published by PS Publishing under their Absinthe Books imprint. Tracy Fahey is an award-winning Irish writer whose work is never less than captivating, and this novella packs a real punch into its 107 pages. The story works on several different levels – part body-horror, part psychological fantasy, part social commentary on middle-age – and They Shut Me Up masterfully offers up a triumphant feminist battle cry within the framework of its supernatural narrative. Annie is an engaging character – her humility and self-deprecating humour is a delight – and we recognise her disappointment at life’s mundane journey, especially us of a certain age . But as she embarks on her journey of self-empowerment we are right beside her, cheering her on. In a world where, despite efforts to reverse the long-standing effects of inequality, this is a message that’s as relevant now as it’s ever been. Highly recommended.

Whilst recuperating from a recent heart-attack, social worker Carrie Riccioni moves to her friend’s holiday home in Norfolk coastal town Seagrave for a few weeks, hoping the sun and sea-air will aid her recovery. With little to do other than daily gentle exercise, Carrie’s attention begins to turn towards the small community of Miller’s Point, where she quickly notices the tensions and suppressed emotions of the people who live there. When a young girl goes missing, Carrie’s curiosity becomes a problem to one of the residents, and hidden secrets are revealed, triggering a chain reaction of events that leads to death and madness.

This is the seventh suspense novel by Mark West and published by The Book Folks. All of the novels are stand-alone stories, and yet they all share the same qualities – likeable protagonists, immensely readable prose that you just can’t help but gobble up (just one more chapter…), thrilling suspense plots with more twists and turns than a dizzy rattlesnake, and a great sense of location (you really do feel like you recognise the places described). This one had elements of Hitchcock’s Rear Window coupled with The Lady Vanishes, as Carrie can’t help but look into the disappearance of vulnerable teen Flo. There was something about Carrie that I really liked, and her background as a social worker felt realistic and plausible. I’d love to see her mixed up in another dangerous adventure again in the future. There are plenty of red-herrings and subplots to keep the pace fizzing along, and the denouement completely wrong-footed me (as someone who reads a lot of crime thriller this is something that I can’t claim happens that often). To See Too Much is a wonderful read and I had a great time with it – I’d say it’s the perfect beach novel or something to sink your teeth into over a Christmas break – and it will appeal to readers who enjoy thrills, suspense and a modern take on the whodunit genre. Highly recommended.

One evening in rural Ireland a loner comes across an abandoned car in a field. There he encounters an Englishman who claims his wife has fled the car, and thrown herself into the sea. The police are called and Detective Inspector Strafford is dispatched from Dublin to investigate the woman’s disappearance. But there is something clearly amiss. Several of the characters appear to be hiding something, and Strafford has to call on his old ally, pathologist Quirke, to help unravel the tight knot of complexities and buried resentments.

The Quirke series of crime novels first began in 2006 with Christine Falls, published under the pseudonym Benjamin Black. Six further books followed, after which Banville dropped the pseudonym and published April in Spain using the name John Banville, which also featured (alongside Quirke) the younger police detective St John Strafford. Since then there has been The Lock Up and Snow. The Drowned is the fourth entry in the Quirke & Strafford series.

I adore these books. Sometimes I come across reviews of them, clearly written by fans of historical detective fiction, and they generally criticise the melancholy tone and the glacial pacing of the plot. Which is to miss the point by a long chalk. These novels are literary character studies featuring unsatisfied and deeply flawed men, with 1950s Ireland – and all the political and religious complexities that come with that – as its backdrop. They are snippets of life from a bygone time. They’re superbly written character examinations of what makes us human. The detective aspect is almost always secondary. Sometimes the mystery isn’t at all that compelling. It’s certainly not the thing that drives the storyline.

In this particular novel there’s a character whose past would generally make him deeply unsympathetic. And yet Banville’s skill as a writer allow us to feel for him, to see the world through his eyes, and to realise that things are not just black and white; there are shades of darkness in all of us. Strafford’s relationship to Quirke’s daughter Phoebe evolves, and we are taken into uncomfortable territory with the novel’s progression. I admire Quirke, even if I find him a little too curmudgeonly, and yet I really like St John Strafford and enjoy their uneasy relationship.

John Banville’s prose is an absolute delight. He writes with a deeply satisfying style, precise and yet unpretentious. This is what real storytelling is, when the author demands we follow him on the journey not because we’re curious about what might happen in the story, but by the fact that we care about what will happen to his characters. The Drowned is yet another masterpiece of historic fiction and comes highly recommended.

Agatha Christie’s 1939 novel And Then There Were None is widely acknowledged to be the bestselling crime novel of all time. And it’s easy to understand why. Eight seemingly unconnected guests travel to a remote island off the coast of Devon – upon which lies a solitary house – where they are met by a couple who have been employed as housekeepers. Their mysterious host – U N Owen – is nowhere to be seen, and the quests quicky realise that not one of them has actually met him (or here). On the first evening one of the guests dies quite suddenly, plunging the remaining characters into a nightmarish plot of murder and deceit. They are being executed, one by one, in a manner in tune with the childhood nursery rhyme that adorns the walls of their room.

This novel is so famous it has pretty much become a touchstone of Western pop culture, at least in the crime genre. Agatha Christie herself described the novel as one of the most difficult to write, given that she had to account for all of the various twists in the storyline, whilst at the same time not just disguising the identity of the killer from the reader, but also by totally wrongfooting the reader so that the final solution comes as much a shock as it would have to the poor unfortunate victims of the killer. Like most of Christie’s work, there is little in the way of characterisation – she could never be accused of padding out her novels with unnecessary detail – but it seems churlish to criticise, when what makes Christie’s stories work so well is her masterful plotting. In fact, nearly fifty years since her death, I have yet to read a mystery writer more accomplished in their plotting than Agatha Christie.

This version of the novel – the Ultimate Mystery Edition – has the novelty of that its final chapter is delivered in a rather interesting manner – via a sealed document inside the printed book, and by email once an attempt to solve the crime has been made in the e-version. This novelty adds little to the book’s charm. If anything, its final chapter accentuates the very clumsiness that Christie herself fought against. It feels almost tacked on, even though it quite clearly isn’t, although it does come across as a bit awkward, similar to the exposition dump at the ending of Psycho.

And Then There Were None is a truly remarkable novel, and there have been many cinematic and television adaptations over the years – but most of these utilise Christie’s rewritten 1943 version which changed the rather bleak original ending into something more palatable for stage audiences (and the superb Rene Clair film from 1945). So to readers unfamiliar with the original story, the novel might come as something of a surprise. And it’s a very claustrophobic book, with an overriding sense of futility and the inevitability of death, possibly the effect of it being written during the Second World War. The spectre of death feels very close. I’ve read this several times over the years and it’s a novel that never fails to thrill. Highly recommended.

Elemental Forces is the fifth entry in Flame Tree Press’s ABC of Horror series edited by Mark Morris, containing original non-themed horror stories from some of the best practitioners of modern dark fiction. This particular book has sixteen commissioned stories and four of the best that were selected from an open submission window.

Following a brief but interesting introduction by the editor, Poppy Z Brite kicks us off with The Peeler, in which Barton visits a shady place down near the docks, undergoing an operation which will help him pay for an old friend’s medical treatment. But this is no ordinary procedure, and what Barton is set is lose is worth far more than he really understands. This is a visceral, gut-punch of a story, and a fine way to commence proceedings. The Entity by Nicholas Royle is a subtle slice of the uncanny, in which the narrator Tim is asked by Ruth, an old friend from university, to pet-sit for her and her husband whilst they take a short holiday. The house is in rural France, and before the couple depart they tell Tim that the house has an ‘entity’. What follows next is unsettling and suspenseful, told with Royle’s trademark prose – deceptively straightforward and yet layered with disturbing suggestion – with such a wonderful ending. Christina Henry’s Nobody Wants to Work Here Anymore involves strange goings-on at a fast-food restaurant. The setting feels refreshingly original, and the story grows darker and darker as the story progresses. The Scarecrow Festival by Tim Major is an enjoyable slice of British folk horror in which Andy visits his old school friend Gavin in order to attend the village’s scarecrow festival. But tensions are high because they haven’t spoken for 27 years following a disturbing incident at school… The Wrong Element by Aaron Dries tells the story of Hugo and his son Finn (using both characters’ viewpoints) who are scarred – physically and mentally – by Hugo’s ex, Guy. Dark and disturbing.

Mister Reaper by Annie Knox is at times heartbreaking, frightening and humorous. When Stephanie comes round near midnight in a shopping mall after a failed suicide attempt, she is greeted by her version of the Grim Reaper. Only this one has her best interests at heart. I found Laurel Hightower’s The Call of the Deep to be incredibly creepy. Mel works at The Stack (a government nuclear facility), and her shift begins as a fellow co-worker vanishes in mysterious circumstances. This story was one of my favourites, touching on Lovecraftian themes, and it did little to ease my thalassophobia. Luigi Musolino’s The Plague tells the story of Tullio, who wakes one morning feeling like he is coming down with some dreadful illness. To a generation of readers who have recently experienced the Covid pandemic, this one is truly frightening. The always-reliable Paul Finch offers Jack-A-Lent, blending crime and horror into a startlingly intense tale about a gang of violent thugs from Merseyside. Another highlight is Gwendolyn Kiste’s The Only Face You Ever Knew, in which Catherine’s girlfriend Veronica vanishes one day in a supermarket. The progress of this tale caught me off-guard, with some incredibly creepy passages of prose.

They Eat the Rest by Jim Horlock is one that didn’t quite work for me, although it’s an enjoyably delightful piece of body horror. Paul Tremblay’s The Note is mysterious and evocative, telling the story of what happens to a couple when the wife disappears after reading a note pinned to the door of a neighbours’ abandoned house. Unmarked by Tim Lebbon is hauntingly beautiful – with enough about the story to support a much longer work – in which the restless spirit of our long-dead narrator visits an elderly man, whose mutually-beneficial relationship reveals the whereabouts of hidden graves. This supernatural tale is wonderful, melancholy and deeply moving. Red Meat Flag by David J Schow details the search for a gruesome serial killer known as Mister Tweezers, told with unmistakable flair by one of the originators of splatterpunk. PC Verrone’s A Review of Slime Tutorial: The Musical was another that didn’t quite do it for me, despite it being a well-written satire on musical theatre, shot through with some razor-sharp prose.

In Will Maclean’s The Doppelganger Ballet a violent gangster visits a fortune teller, only to be warned that he will soon be murdered by a man with the same face as him. An enjoyable revenge thriller, written in an engaging style. When I say that Eight Days West of Plethora by Verity Holloway reminds me of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, I mean it as a compliment. Mancino steals a mysterious box from a priest and is urged to throw it into the sea. When he fails to comply, a series of strange events make him regret his decision. Kurt Newton’s The Daughters of Canaan is full of portents and nightmarish visions as Mary-Alice struggles to deal with the idea that she can see dog-headed men hidden among society. Does she have a role herself to play in this? A House of Woe and Mystery by Andy Davidson is short and sweet, an apocalyptic tale in which a woman reflects on her life and the events that brought about the end of the world. I loved the brevity of this one, which makes every word count. Sarah Langan’s I Miss You Too Much is a disturbing story about a married woman who journeys back to her childhood home to care for her mother in the last few days of her life. This is a well-written tale, unsettling, and with a nice ending, and is a fine way to round off the anthology.

This anthology is further evidence that Flame Tree Press’s ABCs of Horror is a series that is going from strength to strength. Under the stewardship of Mark Morris, Elemental Forces is another fine entry, suggesting that the market for horror short stories is as vibrant as it’s ever been. The non-themed horror anthology has always been one close to my heart, and these books are testament to the editor’s skill and the willingness of the publisher to bring these new stories to the public. The breadth of storytelling and the quality of prose highlights the diversity that can be found in dark fiction, destroying the notion that horror is a tired genre with little to offer but gore and violence, aimed at a narrow demographic. No matter what sub-genre of horror you prefer, there is surely something here to satisfy every reader. This reader is already looking forward to next year’s entry. Highly recommended.

I picked up this short novel almost by accident, attracted by its evocative cover – the monochrome picture of an upturned book on the grass beside an empty deckchair. I was of course familiar with William Trevor through his rather excellent short stories (I’ve read several of his collections). How glad I am that I gave in to my impulse and tried something of his work at longer length.

On the back of the book William Trevor promises us “three deaths that summer” (at least on the version I read). We’re told who the identity of the first death is – Letitia Davenant, wealthy wife of older Thaddeus Davenant, who both live at Quincunx House in rural Essex, together with their baby Georgina, their dog Rosie, and their house-keeping couple Maidment and Zenobia. Through the superbly-crafted prose of the opening chapter we learn that on the day of Letitia’s death she and her husband quarrelled over something extremely trivial – a letter received by Thaddeus from an old flame who was down on her luck, with a request for him to visit her. This is a request that Thaddeus fully intendeds to ignore, but his wife is of a rather more benevolent nature and she urges him to comply with the request.

In the wake of his wife’s sudden death Thaddeus reconsiders his decision and takes it upon himself to make contact with his lady friend from the past, the formidable Mrs Ferry. In the meantime his mother-in-law, Mrs Iveson, suggests that he should employ a nanny to help him take care of the baby, and in an effort to head off the suggestion that Mrs Iveson herself should move into Quincunx House to take the role, he reluctantly agrees. This action sets off a chain of events that eventually results in at least one of the other deaths, with the third occurring in a more inevitable manner.

One of the nannies that is interviewed – and subsequently rejected – is young Pettie, a damaged waif from a children’s home, who updates her simple-minded friend Albert on what has happened, and how the promise of a better life propels her into foolish action. The story is told from the viewpoint of several characters, offering further insight into the events and clarifying elements of the tale from opposing perspectives. To say more about the plot would be to spoil it. It’s a thrilling, yet tragic tale. But Trevor’s style is unhurried and subtle. Each line is to be savoured, the stunning prose possessing an old-fashioned, dreamlike quality, even though the setting is contemporary. The characters are so vividly drawn with such an economy of words, it’s not difficult to understand why William Trevor is so highly regarded in literary circles. This is a superb novel – one that has me yearning to read more from this celebrated author – and comes highly recommended.

After the end of the Second World War, in an effort to promote unity and forgiveness, the English town of Settlesham was twinned with Alphafen in Germany. Schoolboy Leo Parker began a pen-pal correspondence with Hanna Weber, and for decades the two have continued this long-distance relationship. Now an adult, he decides at last to visit Hannah in her hometown.

His stay in Alphafen seems enjoyable and enlightening. But as soon as he leaves the town, his life begins to unravel. An experience at the airport is disconcerting and troublesome, a family meal becomes grotesquely nightmarish, and when he attends a council meeting to report on his trip, the images appear to have taken on a life of their own. Is Leo losing his grip on reality or has his trip awakened some ancient Alpine legend from its slumber? Has he returned to England with more than just memories of his trip?

The Incubations is published by Flame Tree Press to mark the 60 years since Ramsey Campbell’s first book was released. Campbell is one of Britain’s finest exponents of the weird tale, and The Incubations is a fitting testament to the author’s career. The novel’s central character, Leo Parker, works for his parents’ driving instructor company, and there’s a refreshingly down-to-earth feel to this. Which makes it all the more frightening when the line between reality and nightmare becomes blurred. This element of Campbell’s writing style is so masterful that it feels almost a trademark part of him. The novel is laced with black humour – albeit much of it due to the characters’ linguistic confusion or through the author’s clever word-play – and there’s an overriding sense of impending threat that propels the story forward.

It would impossible to overstate Ramsey Campbell’s impact and influence on the horror scene – he’s won more awards than any other writer in the field – and The Incubations is a terrific novel, deeply unsettling and dazzlingly original. His early work displayed obvious influences from such writers as HP Lovecraft, MR James and Arthur Machen, but over his career he has carefully honed his own distinct style and created his unique mythos, allowing his own voice to be heard. And what a voice it is. I’ve been a fan of his work since I first came across The Doll Who Ate His Mother back when I was a teenager, and I looked forward to reading his latest short stories in the annual Best New Horror series edited by Stephen Jones. A quick scan of his bibliography will evidence titles that are classics of the genre. After 60 years at the top of his game, his latest novel shows no sign of him losing his touch. The Incubations is yet another fantastic entry into the annals of weird fiction. Highly recommended.

Chris Brookmyre’s The Cracked Mirror is a rather unusual murder mystery. It begins almost as a cosy crime novel, as we meet elderly Scottish lady Penelope Coyne, with her razor-sharp mind and her penchant for solving crimes in the sleepy village of Glen Cluthar. A corpse is found in the confessional booth of a local church, strangled. Meanwhile, in California, Johnny Hawke, a world-weary LAPD cop is investigating the possible suicide of a Hollywood screenwriter. At first the two characters seem totally unconnected – a blend of Miss Marple and Harry Bosch – but slowly the two characters’ paths converge and we see them embark on a case where things aren’t always as they first seem.

I haven’t read anything by Chris Brookmyre before, but this a very difficult novel to review. I am hesitant to go into the plot for fear of spoilers, suffice to say that the blurbs give so much away that I would recommend any prospective reader tries to avoid them before reading this book. In fact I’ll go as far as to say that there are certain quotes that gave enough away to allow me to guess the big twist at the end – so from a publisher’s point of view I felt these shouts about how imaginative and genre-splicing the novel is do the book a huge disservice. Brookmyre is already an established crime writer and the publishers should have trusted that word of mouth would have been enough to see this succeed. There is a large amount of characters (although some of them appear only fleetingly and have little bearing on the main plot) and at times the story lags a bit. There are telltale signs that give away the ending (especially when one has the descriptions in mind that suggest the direction the plot is headed) so I felt that it wasn’t quite as clever as it should have been. However it does try to do something very original with the crime novel and for that it should be applauded.

The writing is fast-paced and the plot is at times great fun. But the tone will probably satisfy neither lovers of cosy crime or advocates of the American suspense novel, and I feel the twist might leave some readers rather disappointed. The Cracked Mirror is something of a curate’s egg; not a bad novel, but rather an imaginative one, whose greatest trick is spoiled by over-dramatic marketing.

Kim Morgan, a lecturer of English at Seagrave College and also a local councillor, attends a protest meeting at a church hall about the proposed construction of a golf course in the area. When a fight breaks out, Kim is rescued by handsome Freddy Medwin, with whom she enjoys a romantic dalliance. Soon after she discovers that he’s actually a student at her college. If anyone finds out about their relationship, it could be a disaster for her career. The problem is someone has found out. Someone saw them. Someone took photos. As Kim fights to stay one step ahead of her blackmailer, her life begins to spiral into a maelstrom of deceit, murder and twisted revenge.

We Were Seen is the sixth thriller by Mark West and published by The Book Folks. This one, like the others, is a fast-paced psychological suspense novel, filled with twists and turns. West has a commanding ability to create believable characters and pitch them into extraordinary circumstances. His writing is assured, his characterisation masterful, West is one of those writers who makes the craft look effortless, yet I’ve been on this Earth long enough to know he works incredibly hard to be this readable. His prose demands you power on, just one more short chapter…

We get to spend more time in Seagrave, which is always a good thing. And there’s always a warmth to West’s protagonists, so we root for them in the midst of the darkness that lurks around them. This one is particularly dark, and it touches on societal prejudices and gender politics, as well as toying with our expectations relating to environmental issues, but deep down We Were Seen is a mechanism solely to provoke thrills, chills, and page-turning shocks, and at that it excels.

Estranged friends Dean and Bethan meet after five years apart when they are drawn to a network of caves on a remote Arctic island. Bethan and her friends are environmental activists, determined to protect the land. But Dean’s group’s exploitation of rare earth minerals deep in the caves unleashes an horrific contagion that has rested frozen and undisturbed for many millennia. Fleeing the terrors emerging from the caves, Dean and Bethan and their rival teams undertake a perilous journey on foot across an unpredictable and volatile landscape. The ex-friends must learn to work together again if they’re to survive… and more importantly, stop the horror from spreading to the wider world.

I’ve long been a fan of the work of Tim Lebbon. I find he writes from a rather unique viewpoint, always offering an alternative take on things, constantly looking to give his readers something unexpected. For some unknown reason I had missed his last few novels (I think that’s because I’ve been reading crime fiction for the larger part), but when I had the chance to read his latest novel Among the Living I seized the chance. Boy, am I glad I did.

The novel is set in the near future, featuring a small cast of memorable characters. The plot is fairly straightforward, but the manner in which the story unfolds is superb. It draws together contemporary themes such as climate concerns and environmental activism with body horror and a fast-paced thriller. Parts of it reminded me slightly of the Southern Reach trilogy of books by Jeff VanderMeer (although this does feel like a lazy comparison as Among the Living is so much more than a riff on these novels), but the body-horror aspect of the released virus strikes a strong chord, especially in the wake of the recent global pandemic we have all endured. Clearly Lebbon has researched the science behind the climate aspect, but this does not get in the way of his masterful storytelling. The pace is blistering, especially as the story reaches its climax, and the fate of the characters felt meaningful. This novel would make one hell of a film.

Lebbon has delivered another hit; a wonderfully prescient novel involving a great cast of characters, with a plot that has enough science as to sound totally believable. I had a fantastic time reading this and cannot recommend it enough.