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 The Long Lost by Ramsey Campbell
reviewed by ??
Original appearance: Albedo one issue ??, 1997?
Ramsey Campbell has been at it again and if you like understated, modern, urban horror there are few who can be considered his equal. Campbell's style is particularly English even though his roots lie in the realms of Lovecraft and Poe. His work is as much a product of his Liverpool background as any of Stephen King's Castle Rock stories are a product of his.
THE LONG LOST, his latest paperback, could almost be passed off as mainstream with just a tinge of the supernatural about it. The horror of the piece mounts slowly and is never overt. It is merely suggested by the mounting and seemingly coincidental misfortune that surrounds the central characters, David and Joelle Owain, after they befriend a confused old woman, Gwen, while on holiday in Wales. It appears that she may be a distant relative of David's and, as she is virtually homeless, they take her home to Chester with them and place her in a nearby old people's home.
Following a party at the Owain's home, at which Gwen insists on bringing a cake and making sure everyone eats, the lives of their friends begin to fall apart. Even David and Joelle find their cosy security threatened by the jealousy and suspicion that has infected their party guests.
Ramsey Campbell has taken an old folk legend and transmuted it into a modern fable. The issues and concerns that affect the characters are those which can be found in everyone's life. We can all sympathise with David and Joelle and with their friends' tragedies because their destructions are those which could visit any one of us. The supernatural in his story is only the catalyst for a series of horrors which could afflict us all. And this is the power of Campbell's novel. It's terrors are mundane. We know and recognise them. They are our own.
 Alone With The Horrors by Ramsey Campbell
reviewed by ??
Original appearance: Albedo one issue ??, 1997?
There is something quite disconcerting about RAMSEY CAMPBELL's use of the ordinary, the mundane, to frighten. ALONE WITH THE HORRORS is a collection of 39 of his short stories which span his first thirty years in print and which illustrate his abilities admirably.
In his introduction Campbell makes an apology for the first story in the volume, The Room in the Castle, which was the earliest of his stories to be published. It is a Cthulhu pastiche and as such is interesting only as a signpost as to where Campbell was coming from. The next few stories also bear glaring evidence of his roots while demonstrating the development of his own unique style.
Ramsey Campbell's phlegmatic approach to horror is such that he makes it difficult for the reader to dismiss the sentiments in his tales or the possibilities of the appearance of the supernatural in any of our lives. Each one of his stories seems to say these were ordinary people, no more evil or foolish than you and me. If it could happen to them...
The cover says Illustrated by J.K.Potter but inside it says With Photomontage Interiors by J.K.Potter. Whatever name is given to them, there are a series of pictures in the centre of the book illustrating a number of the stories. There is also a superbly evocative author photo to which I wouldn't mind reading the story. The illustrations, or photomontages, are all beautifully executed and cover the mundanely grotesque, Cold Print, to the truly weird, Another World, to the atmospherically wonderful, Loveman's Comeback.
If you are a Ramsey Campbell fan then I doubt the paperback will be able to match the quality of the presentation closely enough to satisfy you. If you like books as artefacts and enjoy stories with the power to chill or to cause you to question what is real, what can and cannot exist in our cosy little world, then I can recommend Alone with the Horrors. If you're looking for a little light bedtime reading, perhaps you should look elsewhere
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