Category Archives: Reviews

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 … Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading →

Eileen Dunlop is an unassuming yet disturbed young woman who lives with her alcoholic father in 1960s Boston. She works as a secretary at a local prison for boys, and has sexual fantasies about one of the guards, dreaming about … Continue reading →

The anthologies edited by Ellen Datlow have always been, to me, an essential read, but when I saw the theme of her latest book – Christmas and Other Horrors: An Anthology of Solstice Horror – for the first time I … Continue reading →

Darkness Beckons is the fourth annual horror anthology edited by Mark Morris and published by Flame Tree Press. Like its predecessors, this one is filled with an excellent array of dark tales, written by some of the best practitioners of … Continue reading →

I’ve been a fan of annual Best Ofs since I started buying books in WH Smith’s in the early 1990s and came across Best New Horror edited by Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell, which was my only source of reading … Continue reading →

Laurie and Mark live on the sixteenth-floor of a block of flats in the north-west of England. She’s a cleaner at the university, Mark a security guard at the nearby power plant. One random day in May, Mark goes missing, … Continue reading →

After the sad loss of his wife Olivia, Joe Hunter begins to hear her voice again, speaking to him from the other side. “I’m not alone.” This chilling statement eventually draws him into the afterlife, a tenebrous place built by … Continue reading →

Birds have always held a fascination to writers of the weird and the uncanny. It might be the uneasy relationship shared between humans and our prevalent feathered friends, it may be that we simply understand that these creatures are likely … Continue reading →