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Where Furnaces Burn
Episodes from the casebook of a police officer in the West Midlands:
A young woman needs help in finding the buried pieces of her lover... so he can return to waking life.
Pale-faced thieves gather by a disused railway to watch a puppet theatre of love and violence.
Why do local youths keep starting fires in the ash woods around a disused mine in the Black Country?
A series of inexplicable deaths lead the police to uncover a secret cult of machine worship.
When a migrant worker disappears, the key suspect is a boy driven mad by memories that are not his own.
Among the derelict factories and warehouses at the heart of the city, an archaic god seeks out his willing victims.
Blurring the occult detective story with urban noir fiction, Where Furnaces Burn offers a glimpse of the myths and terrors buried within the industrial landscape.
26 tales of the weird and frightening.
A young woman needs help in finding the buried pieces of her lover... so he can return to waking life.
Pale-faced thieves gather by a disused railway to watch a puppet theatre of love and violence.
Why do local youths keep starting fires in the ash woods around a disused mine in the Black Country?
A series of inexplicable deaths lead the police to uncover a secret cult of machine worship.
When a migrant worker disappears, the key suspect is a boy driven mad by memories that are not his own.
Among the derelict factories and warehouses at the heart of the city, an archaic god seeks out his willing victims.
Blurring the occult detective story with urban noir fiction, Where Furnaces Burn offers a glimpse of the myths and terrors buried within the industrial landscape.
26 tales of the weird and frightening.
210 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2012
15 people are currently reading
581 people want to read
About the author
Joel Lane
128 books58 followersJoel Lane was a British novelist, short story writer, poet, critic and anthology editor. He received the World Fantasy Award in 2013 and the British Fantasy Award twice.
Born in Exeter, he was the nephew of tenor saxophonist Ronnie Scott. At the time of his death, Lane was living in south Birmingham, where he worked in health industry-related publishing. His location frequently provided settings for his fiction.
Born in Exeter, he was the nephew of tenor saxophonist Ronnie Scott. At the time of his death, Lane was living in south Birmingham, where he worked in health industry-related publishing. His location frequently provided settings for his fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
October 31, 2023
I always struggle to condense my thoughts about Joel Lane’s fiction into a review; there’s just so much to say about the layers to his work. Where Furnaces Burn is the last of Lane’s books to be published before his death in 2013, now reissued – like five others before it – by Influx Press. It’s at once distinctly different from his other collections, and a perfect expression of the mood that runs through all his writing. The stories here are quite unusual: crime/detective fiction with supernatural and weird elements, with each story told from the perspective of the same character, an unnamed police officer working in and around Birmingham (of course).
I have adored Lane’s prose since I first discovered it, but I initially found this book more difficult to love than his novels and earlier collections. The banality and drudge of urban policing sometimes make for an odd combination with supernatural horror. The main character seems at times aggressively heterosexual, which is not something I associate with the men Lane typically writes. The book is also unusually long, consisting of a daunting 26 stories. The first four are among the weakest – another thing that prevented me getting into the book at first. But I’ve always liked ghost stories that include some element of investigation, and the concept becomes more persuasive the more you read, as a tangible world is created.
The settings in Lane’s stories are always bleak. Rot and mould bloom like flowers in spring. Here are eerie images of urban decay, ruined towns reclaimed by nature, infected houses. The narrator’s work repeatedly takes him to the margins of society: depressed and depressing places, divided communities, people nobody cares about; crime used as an excuse for prejudice. The book is full of unexplained disappearances, thefts and deaths, and often, ‘solving’ or stopping these crimes seems both impossible and futile. These have the texture of police stories written by someone ambivalent about the role of policing. The vague, enigmatic titles sound more like tracks on an album of gloomy post-punk instrumentals. Lane’s sentences are as unique and observant as ever: ‘in the half-light his face was a mask with holes for eyes’; ‘the sky was written over with the blank message of autumn’.
Probably my favourite from the book, ‘A Mouth to Feed’ takes the narrator to ‘the valley of broken stones’ and the clutches of a sinister family; it has a distinctly Aickman-esque bent (something underlined by its title). ‘Black Country’ brilliantly exploits the disturbing possibilities inherent in the unpredictable behaviour of children. ‘The Victim Card’ is an excellent story about a man with many facets who disappears, leaving several obsessed people behind. I loved the atmosphere of ‘Point of Departure’ and ‘The Receivers’ (the politicised violence of which is reminiscent of Scar City); ‘Wake Up in Moloch’, which feels original and uniquely of its place; and ‘A Cup of Blood’, more of a traditional mystery/ghost story than the others.
Taken from ‘The Sunken City’, these lines describe the contents of a killer’s notebook – a strange and terrible story with obscure links to (yet more) mysterious deaths. But they could easily be referring to a missing story from Where Furnaces Burn itself. Motifs repeat throughout: cults appear in ‘Blue Smoke’, ‘Wake Up in Moloch’ and ‘Blind Circles’; portals in ‘Quarantine’, ‘Still Water’ and ‘Point of Departure’. We stumble across ‘anti-people’ and places that don’t officially exist. Dreams bleed into reality in violent ways.
With so many stories, there’s a little too much room for repetition: while the recurring themes are mostly effective, creating the impression of a rich text, a weaker entry like ‘Slow Burn’ is at risk of reading like a rehash. There’s a sense of time passing as Where Furnaces Burn progresses: it spans a big chunk of the unnamed protagonist’s life, but it’s not just that; the stories feel like they have space between them, somehow, and I wasn’t surprised to learn they were written over the course of more than a decade. We see Lane’s concerns as a writer shifting and evolving along with the narrator’s career and relationships. The final story, ‘Facing the Wall’, provides a poignant conclusion, bringing the book full circle.
I have adored Lane’s prose since I first discovered it, but I initially found this book more difficult to love than his novels and earlier collections. The banality and drudge of urban policing sometimes make for an odd combination with supernatural horror. The main character seems at times aggressively heterosexual, which is not something I associate with the men Lane typically writes. The book is also unusually long, consisting of a daunting 26 stories. The first four are among the weakest – another thing that prevented me getting into the book at first. But I’ve always liked ghost stories that include some element of investigation, and the concept becomes more persuasive the more you read, as a tangible world is created.
The settings in Lane’s stories are always bleak. Rot and mould bloom like flowers in spring. Here are eerie images of urban decay, ruined towns reclaimed by nature, infected houses. The narrator’s work repeatedly takes him to the margins of society: depressed and depressing places, divided communities, people nobody cares about; crime used as an excuse for prejudice. The book is full of unexplained disappearances, thefts and deaths, and often, ‘solving’ or stopping these crimes seems both impossible and futile. These have the texture of police stories written by someone ambivalent about the role of policing. The vague, enigmatic titles sound more like tracks on an album of gloomy post-punk instrumentals. Lane’s sentences are as unique and observant as ever: ‘in the half-light his face was a mask with holes for eyes’; ‘the sky was written over with the blank message of autumn’.
Probably my favourite from the book, ‘A Mouth to Feed’ takes the narrator to ‘the valley of broken stones’ and the clutches of a sinister family; it has a distinctly Aickman-esque bent (something underlined by its title). ‘Black Country’ brilliantly exploits the disturbing possibilities inherent in the unpredictable behaviour of children. ‘The Victim Card’ is an excellent story about a man with many facets who disappears, leaving several obsessed people behind. I loved the atmosphere of ‘Point of Departure’ and ‘The Receivers’ (the politicised violence of which is reminiscent of Scar City); ‘Wake Up in Moloch’, which feels original and uniquely of its place; and ‘A Cup of Blood’, more of a traditional mystery/ghost story than the others.
What I read, I’m still not sure. Maybe I fell asleep and dreamed I was reading. It was some kind of story about the canals rising, the city underwater. Rats and people swimming, silver bubbles escaping from their mouths, the mystery of their breath painting a terrible blue-red sunset. The houses changing underwater, becoming the ruins that their occupiers had always dreamed of. The dreams themselves rotting, bringing people and vermin and weeds together in a morass of toxic desire that would churn and corrode forever in the darkness.
Taken from ‘The Sunken City’, these lines describe the contents of a killer’s notebook – a strange and terrible story with obscure links to (yet more) mysterious deaths. But they could easily be referring to a missing story from Where Furnaces Burn itself. Motifs repeat throughout: cults appear in ‘Blue Smoke’, ‘Wake Up in Moloch’ and ‘Blind Circles’; portals in ‘Quarantine’, ‘Still Water’ and ‘Point of Departure’. We stumble across ‘anti-people’ and places that don’t officially exist. Dreams bleed into reality in violent ways.
With so many stories, there’s a little too much room for repetition: while the recurring themes are mostly effective, creating the impression of a rich text, a weaker entry like ‘Slow Burn’ is at risk of reading like a rehash. There’s a sense of time passing as Where Furnaces Burn progresses: it spans a big chunk of the unnamed protagonist’s life, but it’s not just that; the stories feel like they have space between them, somehow, and I wasn’t surprised to learn they were written over the course of more than a decade. We see Lane’s concerns as a writer shifting and evolving along with the narrator’s career and relationships. The final story, ‘Facing the Wall’, provides a poignant conclusion, bringing the book full circle.
September 27, 2023
Update: Joel has died in his sleep aged 50. I'm shattered by his death, shocked. He was a great writer and his work should be better known..
Update: This book has been re-released by Influx Press to mark ten years since Joel’s death.
The stories in Joel's latest collection are linked, being from the casebook of a police officer from the West Midlands. But I have read some of them (he's in the writer's group I attend) and they are not as straightforward as that summary suggests. No, they are as weird and unsettling as ever. Looking forward to reading the lot...
..last night at the group Joel said this was the book he wanted to be judged by, it was his favourite, and he's written many fine books, novels, and story and poetry collections, so I'm really looking forward to getting hold of this.
I cannot other than be biased when reviewing Joel's work, because he is a a good friend and colleague. It is doubly difficult with this book because I found a story had been dedicated to me. (Joel didn't say..).
But anyway...
I should know better – I started thinking, wow this policeman has been through so much, attacked, brutalised, a marriage going wonky, witness to countless weirdnesses, like ghostly parasites or ritual slaying or angels like winged dogs on the concrete staircase out of New Street station - but that’s because I’m taking things too literally. That’s a mistake when you read Lane’s work, you must give up literalness, and jump straight into Lane land. That’s not to say there isn't comment and satire relevant to life today, there’s plenty, in almost every story, eg one story is about the BNP attacks in Burnley spreading to Kingstanding, many others depict the broken areas of long term recession, and its effects on residents. It is very real:
When a lorry driver in north central Birmingham takes the wrong fork at Perry Barr, he or she comes upon a lonely and faceless country. The Aldridge Road passes the City Cemetery and bears north-east into a wasteland of garages, factories, scrap yards and expressways. The only sounds are dogs barking and cars backfiring. The roads widen, as if fattened by their diet of oil-soaked rain. The trees fade away and the colour washes out of the skyline, leaving only a blank repeated motif of tarmac, breezeblock and concrete. It’s a screen saver of a district.
But then Lane will slip you out of the real, with a sleight of hand so cool you don’t notice, and the following seems natural:
I saw something move out of the gutter. Like a surgical glove or a plastic bag blowing…It slipped onto the girl’s face, and I went to pull it off but my hand went through it. The blood from her face soaked into it, and I saw it was like.. like some tiny flattened child…
Although much is bleak, the stories are not without a dry humour: someone had painted with a brush on the wall of the station car park: ‘WHO STOLE MY SPRAY CAN?’. A gang meets up in the Bar Selona.
So, for days I was wrapped up in this intense but shadowy world, set in the places around me, passed each day or had been to. I started looking round to make sure I was alone. I started feeling itchy. Lane has once more scared and delighted me in equal measure.
PS (added Nov 6th 2013): This book has just won a World Fantasy Award for best collection.
Update: This book has been re-released by Influx Press to mark ten years since Joel’s death.
The stories in Joel's latest collection are linked, being from the casebook of a police officer from the West Midlands. But I have read some of them (he's in the writer's group I attend) and they are not as straightforward as that summary suggests. No, they are as weird and unsettling as ever. Looking forward to reading the lot...
..last night at the group Joel said this was the book he wanted to be judged by, it was his favourite, and he's written many fine books, novels, and story and poetry collections, so I'm really looking forward to getting hold of this.
I cannot other than be biased when reviewing Joel's work, because he is a a good friend and colleague. It is doubly difficult with this book because I found a story had been dedicated to me. (Joel didn't say..).
But anyway...
I should know better – I started thinking, wow this policeman has been through so much, attacked, brutalised, a marriage going wonky, witness to countless weirdnesses, like ghostly parasites or ritual slaying or angels like winged dogs on the concrete staircase out of New Street station - but that’s because I’m taking things too literally. That’s a mistake when you read Lane’s work, you must give up literalness, and jump straight into Lane land. That’s not to say there isn't comment and satire relevant to life today, there’s plenty, in almost every story, eg one story is about the BNP attacks in Burnley spreading to Kingstanding, many others depict the broken areas of long term recession, and its effects on residents. It is very real:
When a lorry driver in north central Birmingham takes the wrong fork at Perry Barr, he or she comes upon a lonely and faceless country. The Aldridge Road passes the City Cemetery and bears north-east into a wasteland of garages, factories, scrap yards and expressways. The only sounds are dogs barking and cars backfiring. The roads widen, as if fattened by their diet of oil-soaked rain. The trees fade away and the colour washes out of the skyline, leaving only a blank repeated motif of tarmac, breezeblock and concrete. It’s a screen saver of a district.
But then Lane will slip you out of the real, with a sleight of hand so cool you don’t notice, and the following seems natural:
I saw something move out of the gutter. Like a surgical glove or a plastic bag blowing…It slipped onto the girl’s face, and I went to pull it off but my hand went through it. The blood from her face soaked into it, and I saw it was like.. like some tiny flattened child…
Although much is bleak, the stories are not without a dry humour: someone had painted with a brush on the wall of the station car park: ‘WHO STOLE MY SPRAY CAN?’. A gang meets up in the Bar Selona.
So, for days I was wrapped up in this intense but shadowy world, set in the places around me, passed each day or had been to. I started looking round to make sure I was alone. I started feeling itchy. Lane has once more scared and delighted me in equal measure.
PS (added Nov 6th 2013): This book has just won a World Fantasy Award for best collection.
November 22, 2013
WHERE FURNACES BURN is one of the best single-author collections of horror fiction I've read. Even though I've read most of these stories before in other collections and magazines (I often buy the latter because Joel Lane has a story in them), they're compiled here with a unique chronology and continuity so I enjoyed them even more second time around. Some of the most original horror I've come across, blended with police investigations and urban tragedy (all set in my home town), and so well-written. It takes a true poet to re-imagine the world like this.
April 14, 2021
This has the familiar Joel Lane touches: the clean, matter-of-fact prose; the post-industrial depression of the Midlands; plucky characters trying to get by in challenging circumstances; the promise and often unsatisfactory outcomes of sexual encounters; violent events that may have some supernatural agency. At first I wasn't sure about the narrator shared by the stories, and their brief lengths (some early pieces are just 3-4 pages). But there are some terrifically unsettling ideas here, and the atmospheric treatments are almost always surprising, with open-ended non-resolutions.
"Morning's Echo", the story about the body parts mentioned in the blurb, has a gentle, dreamy and futile romantic quality; if you had described it to me, I would have laughed at you, but somehow Lane weaves all this into a memorable tale. After the true crime shenanigans of the opening, "The Hostess" ends with a truly disturbing sequence that leaves multiple questions in the air. Near the end:
That really sums up so much of Lane's writing for me.
We seem to be in a mid-collection dip at the half. The shorter pieces with the recurring policeman narrator has a bit of an X-Files vibe; indeed Fox Mulder is name checked jokingly more than once. I'm not a fan of the format; we get small regular updates on the narrator's troubled homelife, which I find less interesting than the myriad self-contained relationships in (say) The Earth Wire.
"Without a Mind" is definitely a highlight, featuring some of Lane's genuinely disturbing supernatural creatures. As usual, we get a fugitive glance or three, and no explanations. It ends:
I think the police procedural frame and the short length of the pieces work against aspects of Lane's writing that I really liked in his previous collections. There's no shortage of striking passages and disturbing details. But even with my short attention span, I think the narrator's engagements with the uncanny events seem a bit brief to be satisfying (again, that X-Files vibe). Most of these pieces are quite enjoyable as dark urban mood vignettes, but probably won't stick with me. The personal transformation in the final story could have used more development as well; it brings the collection to a nice open-ended close.
"Morning's Echo", the story about the body parts mentioned in the blurb, has a gentle, dreamy and futile romantic quality; if you had described it to me, I would have laughed at you, but somehow Lane weaves all this into a memorable tale. After the true crime shenanigans of the opening, "The Hostess" ends with a truly disturbing sequence that leaves multiple questions in the air. Near the end:
I wasn't sure if I'd told her a kind of lie or a kind of truth. Either way, she'd got the message.
That really sums up so much of Lane's writing for me.
We seem to be in a mid-collection dip at the half. The shorter pieces with the recurring policeman narrator has a bit of an X-Files vibe; indeed Fox Mulder is name checked jokingly more than once. I'm not a fan of the format; we get small regular updates on the narrator's troubled homelife, which I find less interesting than the myriad self-contained relationships in (say) The Earth Wire.
"Without a Mind" is definitely a highlight, featuring some of Lane's genuinely disturbing supernatural creatures. As usual, we get a fugitive glance or three, and no explanations. It ends:
Marked on the dead baby's forehead and cheeks like vaccination scars were the prints of tiny human fingers.
I think the police procedural frame and the short length of the pieces work against aspects of Lane's writing that I really liked in his previous collections. There's no shortage of striking passages and disturbing details. But even with my short attention span, I think the narrator's engagements with the uncanny events seem a bit brief to be satisfying (again, that X-Files vibe). Most of these pieces are quite enjoyable as dark urban mood vignettes, but probably won't stick with me. The personal transformation in the final story could have used more development as well; it brings the collection to a nice open-ended close.
December 22, 2016
Well I've found a new favorite weird fiction author. This is so good I'm amazed this author wasn't bigger on my radar. I think Lane's work ranks with the best of my favorite weird authors like Simon Strantzas, Brian Evenson, Cody Goodfellow, Livia Llewellyn and others. It's very unfortunate Lane died almost three years ago now, a very talented writer, and by the tributes that I've read, a great man and friend.
These are some of the most emotionally impactful weird stories I've ever read. In this area they rank with the stories of Nathan Ballingrud, Glen Hirshberg or Clint Smith for example. But these are even harder, more potent.
This is weird-noir fiction, with a touch of Carnacki perhaps. They're all about a detective who encounters the supernatural and weird everywhere he turns. He also comes face-to-face with a declining society. We casually get reflections like this, during the search for a missing child in the story "Beth's Law":
"We found, in total, nine dead vagrants, two dead addicts (frozen in a last embrace under dead leaves and bracken on the Clent Hills) and—in one particular Edgbaston lake—the skeletons of more than a dozen newborn babies that had been there half a century or more."
Everything is set in run down hostels, rainy streets, abandoned factories. It's an eternal winter, a hostile place. They're peopled with addicts, prostitutes and the insane.
As much as weirdness and crime is central to the plots, the stories exude a sense of post-industrial loss, urban blight, societal degeneracy and corruption. Behind the grit and grime we get a hint of the happier times swallowed up in the past. And we mourn for what the world has become. You really get a sense of the very worst underbelly of society, the horror that often lurks behind respectability and influence. It's so potent rubs off on you after a while. You start to wonder what ugliness the police find in your own town...
I could see where some might complain that the stories are similar in setting and tone, but I didn't mind at all. It's rare that in a collection of 26 stories there's not bad or mediocre one in the bunch. They're generally very short, about 3,000 words, rarely more than 5,000. I liked some more than others of course, some were a bit too crime-focused than weird-focused for my taste.
Joel Lane left a fairly large number of short stories and I look forward to reading more of them.
A few standouts: Still Water, The Hostess, Beth's Law, A Mouth to Feed, Without a Mind, The Last Witness, Waiting for the Thaw, Slow Burn, The Receivers,
My Stone Desire - Wow, what a way to start a collection. This is very dark stuff, powerful and impactful, yet it's the muted melancholy of it that makes it so impressive, "I began to realize how fragile the links between people really are." A cop in training and his girlfriend cut off their relationship after making love under a very strange, decaying bridge.
Still Water - Again, Wow! This story was less emotional and was just downright scary and disturbing at times. Excellent weird fiction it's a bit vague, but we certainly get enough hints to cause a shudder. The detective participates in a raid of a house where jewel thieves are believed to be hiding out, they find one young man driven insane by what he has discovered and worshipped there.
Morning’s Echo - Another story of muted melancholy, and the exploring of these decayed, abandoned, moldy, wet places. This one didn't blow me away, but I relished the atmosphere. The detective helping a girl find her missing gang-leader boyfriend starts having strange dreams which lead to clues in real life.
The Hostess - On the surface this is a ghost story, which is quite unsettling in itself. But what really comes through is the urban decay and sense of loss for a place, the destruction and hopelessness of a decaying town. The detective becomes intrigued by the savage murder of a little girl in the midst of a gang turf war, and the strange events that occur on the spot on her murder afterward.
Blue Smoke - This one didn't hit me as hard as some others, but it has some creepy moments, especially the final paragraph, and an unsettling aftertaste. I really loved the way it opens, and again, the blighted sense of place. A man investigates the sudden disappearance of large numbers of the homeless.
Beth’s Law - I'm rarely this emotionally impacted by weird fiction, but I had to take a minute after this was over. It's another excellent story, very impressive, memorable and with punch to the gut impact. A detective goes on a stake out, hoping to protecting a missing child from a ritual sacrifice.
A Cup of Blood - This one is a bit more focused on detective work than the weird or cosmic. Still entertains for all the grimy places it takes the reader. After a professional fence complains of having a family heirloom stolen, the police find that it has far more than monetary value attached to it.
Even the Pawn - Another grim, crime-focused story. Again I prefer more weird-focused tales, but this was one of the more immersive stories of this type. After a prostitute is found dead the police try to resolve what happened, despite the big influences in town keeping everyone's mouth shut.
A Mouth to Feed - This story is firmly back into cosmically weird territory. I liked the mysterious small town vibe and the memorably queasy finale. Two cops investigate when one of their ill partners returns to her strange family and dies.
Quarantine - This is one of my favorites, I love stories about haunted/cursed rooms. This one takes that theme and is very subtle with how it handles it. It's also very effective at evoking the filth and grime of the place. A detective investigates a run down hostel which has been the place of multiple, very strange suicides.
Black Country - This is another great one, this one's a bit more scary than the others, some parts of it certainly unsettled me. I loved the creative, original ending. The post-industrial sense of loss and decay really came through here in a personal way. The detective returns to his hometown, now a decrepit shell of it's former self, to solve a series of strange crimes committed by children.
Without a Mind - It's not often my jaw falls open while reading something. This was just unbelievably good, the whole concept and the execution and a final shock it delivers. When people start dying for no detectable reason, the detective starts seeing strange creatures crouching on people, seemingly stealing their life from them.
The Sunken City - This was a minor story I thought, a short mood piece almost. The detective investigates a man who CCTV seems to capture a man killing someone by "stealing his breath."
Incry - This story has an interesting and original concept. I would have liked to see it expanded a bit though. A toilet box on a quiet road seems to be haunted by a malefic force.
The Last Witness - I liked this one a lot and think it's another of the stand-outs. It's another grimy, corrupt, dark tale, but with a subtle, almost Ligottian philosophical bent. A powerful and ruthless real estate mogul shoots a man on a bridge in front of multiple witnesses, but all of them start to die under mysterious circumstances or go mad.
Dreams of Children - I like the concept here, but I think it would benefit from a longer story. A strange man is a witness to two men who kill each other, and he seems to have a dispassionate ability to arouse violence in others.
Waiting for the Thaw - The concept here is so original, it's amazing someone came up with it, and made it work. It feels like a prose poem on winter loneliness, but much more. It's very affecting, in a way it's the saddest story in the book. Two bodies are found in a strange embrace in an abandoned apartment, the police try to find the renter who has disappeared.
Stiff as Toys - Another story I enjoyed, but didn't pull a lot out of frankly. The police try to discover if the violent suicide of a police psychologist is connected with a series of strange deaths.
The Victim Card - This story is a bit more focused on detective work and mystery, but I did like the ending. A man dies after being beaten and thrown out a window, but the conflicting reports about what he was really like make finding the culprits difficult.
Winter Journey - On the surface I suppose this is a sort of werewolf story, but Lane certainly makes it his own. The detective is bitten by a boy who seems to have been infected by something, and he starts to feel the influence of it as well.
Slow Burn - This one is less urban for a change, but has a great, creepy setting. The police are called out to investigate arson near some old mines, a retired cop is convinced there's more involved because of an encounter he had nearby.
The Receivers - This one reminded me of the story "Black Country," it has a somewhat similar theme. I might actually like this one a bit more. This one approaches the overall theme of societal decay and nostalgia from an interesting angle. The police struggle to solve a series of strange thefts which makes people start seeking out scapegoats.
Wake Up in Moloch - A very weird cult/corporate horror story, this one really kept me guessing. I really loved this from the opening paragraph: "Birmingham grew out of the Industrial Revolution, so in a sense it owes its life to the machine. It was inevitable that sooner or later, we’d have to give something back." Several people are killed by strange machines, but the police cannot find the source of them.
Point of Departure - This one is a bit similar to Incry, but is more memorable, and eerie. In a stairwell that has attracted crime over the years, there is a sudden breakout of unexplained attacks.
Blind Circles - This is dark meditation on what happens to people in a decaying society that offers little hope. Once again this one is similar to an earlier story, "Blue Smoke." The narrator becomes interested in a town which has been overtaken by white nationalists, especially after some very strange newcomers appear in the town.
Facing the Wall - Well if you were hoping for a bit of light at the end of the tunnel I suppose you weren't paying attention! This one is less detached, more personal. As the home life of the narrator falls apart, he attempts to track down a killer who is connected with a masochistic secret society.
December 12, 2013
On November 26, the weird fiction community had a shock when writer Joel Lane passed away in his sleep. I never had the chance to know him on a personal level, but his work was powerful, every story of his left an impression on me. A few days before his passing I picked up Where Furnaces Burn, which won the World Fantasy Award for best collection only a few weeks earlier.
Where Furnaces Burn consists of twenty-six short stories, some new for the collection and others having been published previously since 2004. The stories, which stand well enough on their own, come together to create a rich tapestry of one man's bizarre experiences while a member of the police force in Birmingham, UK.
Joel seems at home taking readers through landscapes of urban decay, and he captures the senses of despair and hopelessness with ease. The unnamed narrator is a flawed man in a decaying marriage that seems destined to fail from the start, and each story represents a different case he has worked on. The majority of the stories play with the sense of "thin places" and some are, in a way, ghost stories, although they are in no way traditional.
All of the stories are short, and the majority are eight to ten pages in length. Although all the stories are cut from the same cloth in terms of tone, they manage to be a diverse lot without a bad one in the bunch. They are all powerful pieces, and I enjoyed savoring them a few at a time.It is also interesting to read the stories in mostly chronological order (not publication order) and seeing how personally involved/obsessed the narrator becomes with some of the abnormal cases he seems to attract, and it's clear that they affect him on a deep level.
Joel Lane will be sorely missed; his voice was one of a kind. By all accounts he was a wonderful gentleman, and I'm sad that I will never have the chance to meet him. While the community mourns the loss of such a talented man, there are many who are honoring him in the best of ways: by reading his fiction and essays. I couldn't recommend this one enough, and readers should also grab The Witnesses Are Gone, a novella that I adore.
Review originally appeared on my blog, The Arkham Digest.
Where Furnaces Burn consists of twenty-six short stories, some new for the collection and others having been published previously since 2004. The stories, which stand well enough on their own, come together to create a rich tapestry of one man's bizarre experiences while a member of the police force in Birmingham, UK.
Joel seems at home taking readers through landscapes of urban decay, and he captures the senses of despair and hopelessness with ease. The unnamed narrator is a flawed man in a decaying marriage that seems destined to fail from the start, and each story represents a different case he has worked on. The majority of the stories play with the sense of "thin places" and some are, in a way, ghost stories, although they are in no way traditional.
All of the stories are short, and the majority are eight to ten pages in length. Although all the stories are cut from the same cloth in terms of tone, they manage to be a diverse lot without a bad one in the bunch. They are all powerful pieces, and I enjoyed savoring them a few at a time.It is also interesting to read the stories in mostly chronological order (not publication order) and seeing how personally involved/obsessed the narrator becomes with some of the abnormal cases he seems to attract, and it's clear that they affect him on a deep level.
Joel Lane will be sorely missed; his voice was one of a kind. By all accounts he was a wonderful gentleman, and I'm sad that I will never have the chance to meet him. While the community mourns the loss of such a talented man, there are many who are honoring him in the best of ways: by reading his fiction and essays. I couldn't recommend this one enough, and readers should also grab The Witnesses Are Gone, a novella that I adore.
Review originally appeared on my blog, The Arkham Digest.
December 9, 2015
Moldy dreamland. If Alice goes down the rabbit hole, the policeman in these stories goes down a rotting tunnel slick with silt and mold and populated with body parts wrapped in newspaper or stuffed with rat poison. Quiet and chilly and mesmerizing. Reads almost like a novel with chapters scattered in time.
February 4, 2014
Reading this was a bittersweet pleasure.
I knew Joel for many years. During this time I read his poetry, his two published novels - and the manuscript of a third novel that never found a home. I particularly admire the bleak controlled beauty of his poems: there is much of the same lyrical bleakness in the short fictions which are collected here.
There is a melancholy pleasure in recognising the landscape of my home city and its surroundings within these stories. At a time when Birmingham desperately tries to market itself as a glossy global city, there's an uncompromising honesty in Joel's depiction of a decaying, fragmented conurbation, haunted by its own past.
The detective format Joel's used works particularly well. The central character's investigations take him to derelict warehouses, canals, hostels, housing estates on the edge of town. What's important is not 'whodunnit', but the many kinds of harm that have been done to the dispossessed and the marginalised.
I wasn't terribly convinced by the detective's failing marriage or the references to his daughter. While an unhappy family life is more or less de rigueur for cops and private eyes, Joel Lane is not sufficiently interested in domesticity to build up a convincing portrait of these relationships. And because these stories are all relatively short, the effect can become a bit too staccato. I'd have been interested to know what a novella built around this material would have been like.
But we'll never know. Nor will there ever be that most unexpected of twists - a happy ending. Instead Life decided to imitate Art in the cruellest fashion possible. The author died suddenly in a way that, despite his various pre-existing health problems, seemed somehow unaccountable.
There's some wonderfully accomplished writing in 'Where Furnaces Burn'. At times I could hear Joel's voice, leaping out between the pages, delivering one-liners.
It's some comfort to know that my friend wrote so much that was enduring and worthwhile - and that he will not be forgotten.
I knew Joel for many years. During this time I read his poetry, his two published novels - and the manuscript of a third novel that never found a home. I particularly admire the bleak controlled beauty of his poems: there is much of the same lyrical bleakness in the short fictions which are collected here.
There is a melancholy pleasure in recognising the landscape of my home city and its surroundings within these stories. At a time when Birmingham desperately tries to market itself as a glossy global city, there's an uncompromising honesty in Joel's depiction of a decaying, fragmented conurbation, haunted by its own past.
The detective format Joel's used works particularly well. The central character's investigations take him to derelict warehouses, canals, hostels, housing estates on the edge of town. What's important is not 'whodunnit', but the many kinds of harm that have been done to the dispossessed and the marginalised.
I wasn't terribly convinced by the detective's failing marriage or the references to his daughter. While an unhappy family life is more or less de rigueur for cops and private eyes, Joel Lane is not sufficiently interested in domesticity to build up a convincing portrait of these relationships. And because these stories are all relatively short, the effect can become a bit too staccato. I'd have been interested to know what a novella built around this material would have been like.
But we'll never know. Nor will there ever be that most unexpected of twists - a happy ending. Instead Life decided to imitate Art in the cruellest fashion possible. The author died suddenly in a way that, despite his various pre-existing health problems, seemed somehow unaccountable.
There's some wonderfully accomplished writing in 'Where Furnaces Burn'. At times I could hear Joel's voice, leaping out between the pages, delivering one-liners.
It's some comfort to know that my friend wrote so much that was enduring and worthwhile - and that he will not be forgotten.
November 11, 2023
Where to begin with a review of this book? Lane was a ridiculously talented story teller and the concept behind this collection was genius. A police officer looking back on a number of cases he dealt with that had unexplainable conclusions, the sort of answers that a police officer couldn’t put down to solve a case without losing their job, the back-drop of this book is just up the road from me in Birmingham, the collection is based in the areas the locals would know about but would never dream of visiting. And mixed in with all this daily violence and death is our Officer’s life, we witness him falling in love and then his personal life starts to unravel as the strange events start to take a toll on his mind as he gets pulled further and further into this dark underworld. See? For a short story collection there is a hell of a lot going on.
There are 26 cases covered here and not a single weakness amongst them, there is nothing monotonous in his voice or each case and you never get bored of the surroundings. I usually manage to pick out a favourite story but it just isn’t possible here, each one holds itself well and demands you pick it. Instead you end up with favourite sections and for me this wasn’t the violence or occult sequences but the arrival of the officer at the scene of the crime, such wonderful descriptions of a run down building or abandoned warehouse, it was so easy to be transported there, a bit like seeing a photo of dereliction by a talented photographer. The range of occult occurrences helps to stop any thoughts of having read this before, if something creeps you out then it has probably got a mention here. The finest piece of noir fiction I’ve ever read. If you have never read anything by Joel Lane then go hunt out one of his books, one of my favourite authors ever.
Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2023...
There are 26 cases covered here and not a single weakness amongst them, there is nothing monotonous in his voice or each case and you never get bored of the surroundings. I usually manage to pick out a favourite story but it just isn’t possible here, each one holds itself well and demands you pick it. Instead you end up with favourite sections and for me this wasn’t the violence or occult sequences but the arrival of the officer at the scene of the crime, such wonderful descriptions of a run down building or abandoned warehouse, it was so easy to be transported there, a bit like seeing a photo of dereliction by a talented photographer. The range of occult occurrences helps to stop any thoughts of having read this before, if something creeps you out then it has probably got a mention here. The finest piece of noir fiction I’ve ever read. If you have never read anything by Joel Lane then go hunt out one of his books, one of my favourite authors ever.
Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2023...
September 5, 2019
One of the finest collections of urban weird tales you could wish for. The bleak horror of David Peace's Yorkshire is leavened with political insight and a chilly compassion in a series of vignettes which show again and again the atavistic nastiness beneath the surface of 'civilised' society. There are intelligent and original twists on old myths (notably the werewolf), but more importantly, the mixture of policing and strangeness never jars - this is a long way from 'Kolchak's Monster of the Week'. The prose is spare but vivid, with Lane a master of the tiny, hideous detail that lingers in the mind even as you wish it wouldn't. A much-missed critic of the weird who never let his learning get in the way of his passions, Lane brought something unique to the field and will hopefully influence it more strongly as his work becomes better known. Sometimes I was reminded of early M. John Harrison (though Lane is never as lyrical), sometimes even Alan Garner's 'Elidor'. Mostly though, these stories wrench back the urban weird from the US city, showing there is more to Birmingham noir than Peaky Blinders. A marvellous collection.
October 4, 2021
I was immediately hooked by the blurb on the back of this collection – ‘Blending the occult detective story with urban noir fiction, Where Furnaces Burn offers a glimpse of the myths and terrors buried within the industrial landscape’.
These short stories are a dark and downbeat blend of weird fiction and urban-landscape writing, from a police perspective (for, I suspect, the reason that police have both access to, and a certain detachment from, society’s horrors), tackling the West Midlands as its chosen locale. Expert evocations of a blighted Black Country, the derelict warehouses of Digbeth, mysterious trains rattling through dark, rainy Birmingham. The West Midlands seems a very underrepresented area of the UK in fiction; Joel Lane creates a terrifying world of post-industrial machine worship, bizarre pagan ritual and ghosts of plaster and rotten wallpaper that makes the place seem dreamlike, scary and weirdly compelling.
A great example of why weird short fiction, with a tight focus on a specific locale, is such a thrilling genre.
These short stories are a dark and downbeat blend of weird fiction and urban-landscape writing, from a police perspective (for, I suspect, the reason that police have both access to, and a certain detachment from, society’s horrors), tackling the West Midlands as its chosen locale. Expert evocations of a blighted Black Country, the derelict warehouses of Digbeth, mysterious trains rattling through dark, rainy Birmingham. The West Midlands seems a very underrepresented area of the UK in fiction; Joel Lane creates a terrifying world of post-industrial machine worship, bizarre pagan ritual and ghosts of plaster and rotten wallpaper that makes the place seem dreamlike, scary and weirdly compelling.
A great example of why weird short fiction, with a tight focus on a specific locale, is such a thrilling genre.
July 6, 2020
A bit of a lost gem of British weird fiction, despite having won the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection back in 2013. It's hard to get hold of a copy now, but if you can, you're in for a treat. Joel Lane is widely respected among the weird fiction/horror community, and it's easy to see why. These stories are tight, strange, and hugely unsettling, as well as painting a surprisingly coherent picture of Birmingham and its surrounds as a modern Gothic landscape, haunted by lost souls and otherworldly creatures. Dark, strange, and hugely enjoyable.
March 17, 2013
Originally published at Risingshadow.
This review is based on a PDF ARC.
Joel Lane's Where Furnaces Burn caught my attention a couple of months ago when I was looking for new and interesting dark fantasy and horror short story collections to read. A friend of mine most warmly recommended this collection to me, because he knew that I'm a big fan of well written dark fantasy and horror fiction, so I decided to read and review it. I'm glad that I had a chance to review this collection, because it turned out to be an excellent collection.
Where Furnaces Burn contains the following short stories:
- My Stone Desire
- Still Water
- Morning's Echo
- The Hostess
- Blue Smoke
- Beth's Law
- A Cup of Blood
- Even the Pawn
- A Mouth to Feed
- Quarantine
- Black Country
- Without a Mind
- The Sunken City
- Incry
- The Last Witness
- Dreams of Children
- Waiting for the Thaw
- Stiff as Toys
- The Victim Card
- Winter Journey
- Slow Burn
- The Receivers
- Wake Up in Moloch
- Point of Departure
- Blind Circles
- Facing the Wall
Where Furnaces Burn is one of those short story collections, which will charm you with their weirdness and originality. These stories are weird, intriguing and horrifying.
I like Joel Lane's prose and writing style very much. He fluently combines occult detective fiction, noir fiction, sensuality, gothic fiction, dark fantasy and horror to create dark fantasy and noir flavoured speculative fiction. The author balances nicely between noir and fantastical elements, using both to his advantage.
It's easy to see that classic horror and noir stories have inspired Joel Lane, because he writes stories in which the happenings develop gradually and end in a perfectly satisfying way. His prose punctuates the terrifying happenings and horrifies the reader in an unsettling way (he lures the reader into a macabre world by writing about small details with shockingly effective and beautiful phrases).
What I like most about these stories is that the author writes about urban decay and macabre things in a fresh and disturbing way. In my opinion the bleak and gloomy settings create a haunting atmosphere to his stories.
The characters and their fates are interesting, because the author writes in the first person narrative style. It adds depth and style to these stories.
The cover art image (Wednesbury by Night in the 19th Century, unknown artist, courtesy of Ironbridge Gorge Museum) looks beautiful. It's a perfect cover art image for this collection, because it sets the right mood for the reader.
Because Joel Lane is a good author and I liked this collection very much, I intend to read more of his stories. In my opinion this collection belongs to the bookshelf of every reader who's ever been interested in horror and mystery stories.
Highly recommended to fans of dark fantasy and horror short stories!
This review is based on a PDF ARC.
Joel Lane's Where Furnaces Burn caught my attention a couple of months ago when I was looking for new and interesting dark fantasy and horror short story collections to read. A friend of mine most warmly recommended this collection to me, because he knew that I'm a big fan of well written dark fantasy and horror fiction, so I decided to read and review it. I'm glad that I had a chance to review this collection, because it turned out to be an excellent collection.
Where Furnaces Burn contains the following short stories:
- My Stone Desire
- Still Water
- Morning's Echo
- The Hostess
- Blue Smoke
- Beth's Law
- A Cup of Blood
- Even the Pawn
- A Mouth to Feed
- Quarantine
- Black Country
- Without a Mind
- The Sunken City
- Incry
- The Last Witness
- Dreams of Children
- Waiting for the Thaw
- Stiff as Toys
- The Victim Card
- Winter Journey
- Slow Burn
- The Receivers
- Wake Up in Moloch
- Point of Departure
- Blind Circles
- Facing the Wall
Where Furnaces Burn is one of those short story collections, which will charm you with their weirdness and originality. These stories are weird, intriguing and horrifying.
I like Joel Lane's prose and writing style very much. He fluently combines occult detective fiction, noir fiction, sensuality, gothic fiction, dark fantasy and horror to create dark fantasy and noir flavoured speculative fiction. The author balances nicely between noir and fantastical elements, using both to his advantage.
It's easy to see that classic horror and noir stories have inspired Joel Lane, because he writes stories in which the happenings develop gradually and end in a perfectly satisfying way. His prose punctuates the terrifying happenings and horrifies the reader in an unsettling way (he lures the reader into a macabre world by writing about small details with shockingly effective and beautiful phrases).
What I like most about these stories is that the author writes about urban decay and macabre things in a fresh and disturbing way. In my opinion the bleak and gloomy settings create a haunting atmosphere to his stories.
The characters and their fates are interesting, because the author writes in the first person narrative style. It adds depth and style to these stories.
The cover art image (Wednesbury by Night in the 19th Century, unknown artist, courtesy of Ironbridge Gorge Museum) looks beautiful. It's a perfect cover art image for this collection, because it sets the right mood for the reader.
Because Joel Lane is a good author and I liked this collection very much, I intend to read more of his stories. In my opinion this collection belongs to the bookshelf of every reader who's ever been interested in horror and mystery stories.
Highly recommended to fans of dark fantasy and horror short stories!
April 5, 2024
The police when investigating a crime follow the process of finding the evidence, interviewing witnesses and finding the perpetrators. But sometimes it isn’t that simple, there are crimes that happen that not even the police can explain.
Well, not all the police, there are records of crimes that have been kept by a police officer in the West Midlands that defy any rational explanation. Drunks that had been going missing from Digbeth and no one had a clue where they had gone. There was then a robbery at an off licence and the trail of clues led the police an unexpected resolution.
A suicide in a hostel seems a regular enquiry with a relatively straightforward conclusion. That is until there is another suicide at the same place. It doesn’t seem to be a coincidence, rather there is something malevolent in the place, but he really doesn’t know what it is…
An investigation into why children were behaving badly and stealing small things leads him to a derelict railwayman’s cottage and it is here where he confronts the thing that is causing the crime wave. The body of a prostitute is discovered behind a bin. They discover her street name is Tanya, but nobody knows who she really is. Following the one lead up, will take him right to the ragged edge of his sanity.
My favourite story is Wake Up In Moloch, a story questioning whether machines are capable of being evil. A death is caused by a sculpture and they follow up the leads. Nothing cam be found though until a second death demands a full bomb squad response and then he has some leads that will take him to a factory where he hopes to get an answer.
I must admit I rarely read horror, I am too much of a scaredy cat. But reading this didn’t really feel like horror. Even though it isn’t hugely scary, there are some unpleasant bits and some quite unnerving moments. I would say that every story gave me a sense of unease with its folk horror elements and post-industrial landscapes. There is quite a lot of psychogeography in here which is great and it felt like a mashup between Edgelands by Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts and London Incognita by Gary Budden. It had a Rivers Of London vibe too, a policeman who can see things that others can’t, but this is but much much darker. If you like your fiction with a darker grimmer edge, then this would be right up your street. You might not want to look behind though…
Well, not all the police, there are records of crimes that have been kept by a police officer in the West Midlands that defy any rational explanation. Drunks that had been going missing from Digbeth and no one had a clue where they had gone. There was then a robbery at an off licence and the trail of clues led the police an unexpected resolution.
A suicide in a hostel seems a regular enquiry with a relatively straightforward conclusion. That is until there is another suicide at the same place. It doesn’t seem to be a coincidence, rather there is something malevolent in the place, but he really doesn’t know what it is…
An investigation into why children were behaving badly and stealing small things leads him to a derelict railwayman’s cottage and it is here where he confronts the thing that is causing the crime wave. The body of a prostitute is discovered behind a bin. They discover her street name is Tanya, but nobody knows who she really is. Following the one lead up, will take him right to the ragged edge of his sanity.
My favourite story is Wake Up In Moloch, a story questioning whether machines are capable of being evil. A death is caused by a sculpture and they follow up the leads. Nothing cam be found though until a second death demands a full bomb squad response and then he has some leads that will take him to a factory where he hopes to get an answer.
I must admit I rarely read horror, I am too much of a scaredy cat. But reading this didn’t really feel like horror. Even though it isn’t hugely scary, there are some unpleasant bits and some quite unnerving moments. I would say that every story gave me a sense of unease with its folk horror elements and post-industrial landscapes. There is quite a lot of psychogeography in here which is great and it felt like a mashup between Edgelands by Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts and London Incognita by Gary Budden. It had a Rivers Of London vibe too, a policeman who can see things that others can’t, but this is but much much darker. If you like your fiction with a darker grimmer edge, then this would be right up your street. You might not want to look behind though…
February 15, 2016
I've always enjoyed Joel's stories and had the privilege of meeting and publishing him on a number of occasions (a story in this collection, "Incry", was published in the British Fantasy Society magazine, New Horizons, when I was editor), so it was no surprise to me that this was a powerful read. The stories in here are particularly excellent, however, as unlike his other collections they feature a single protagonist - a cop - and this thematic thread consolidates the read, adding a greater, cumulative, depth to the stories. Joel writes with precision with not a word wasted, examining the human condition within stories which could be loosely described as supernatural detective fiction but which are far more unsettling than that genre label suggests. The collection was a worthy winner of the World Fantasy Award and is a perfect introduction to his work. A dark, troublesome, realistic read.
September 17, 2025
Whoo boy, was this book dark! I'm still trying to get to grips with whether I liked this level of darkness or not. I'm still unsure!
It's clever how this book is essentially a set of short stories that could be read separately but work together as mounting case files from a Birmingham copper's history book.
The stories are strange, ephemeral, surreal, freaky, eerie and bizarre. Some of them feel haunting to read. Some of them reminded me of the odd cases from the X Files. They're not stories for the squeamish that's for sure. There is plenty of body horror, unpleasant bodily functions, underworld darkness and some animal cruelty (meh, that was my one bugbear).
A very freakish yet cleverly written and intriguing set of stories.
It's clever how this book is essentially a set of short stories that could be read separately but work together as mounting case files from a Birmingham copper's history book.
The stories are strange, ephemeral, surreal, freaky, eerie and bizarre. Some of them feel haunting to read. Some of them reminded me of the odd cases from the X Files. They're not stories for the squeamish that's for sure. There is plenty of body horror, unpleasant bodily functions, underworld darkness and some animal cruelty (meh, that was my one bugbear).
A very freakish yet cleverly written and intriguing set of stories.
April 11, 2025
4.5/5
September 12, 2018
Dragnet by way of the urban apocalypse.
Or maybe, if you want a more recent reference, True Detective with the characters plagued by supernatural elements.
And, oh by the way, this collection won the World Fantasy award in 2013.
This is a short story collection, but it has the heft of a novel, because each story represents a different case explored by a police officer over his 24 years in the service, told in chronological order. These are gritty tales set in the region around Birmingham, England. I mention Dragnet, because Joel Lane has a terse evocative delivery, in keeping with his narrator who is reporting each case as if it is a report. There’s more to this than just the reporting, of course, because the narrator brings up critical and vivid details, the mark of Lane’s expertise as a story teller.
For example, this description: The small window was crusted with loose flakes of sleet, over-lapping and falling away like dead skin.
Each story here is a case, but what gives the book its real heft is the smattering details told in each story about the policeman’s home life, about his relationships. This information may be no more than a paragraph or two from each story, but it is here that we get a real arc to the narrator’s life. The fact that his main focus is on the cases, rather than his home, is telling. I grew up reading Marvel comics, and I can see parallels here in the story telling to what I read in Spiderman: even though each issue of Spiderman focused on the villains, these didn’t stick around long—only an issue or two, until a new villain made an appearance—but the relationships of Peter Parker to his friends and girl-friends continued to gradually evolve, even though you might only get a page or two of this personal information each issue. So it is in Where Furnaces Burn with the stories and the personal information.
Published in 2012, this book is perhaps now even more relevant than it was then, because it often deals with characters and issues that precipitated Brexit and the new jingoism of America. To quote from one story, where a speaker is addressing a crowd of neo-Fascists:
“Good evening. We are here tonight for one reason. Law and order.” His thin voice cut through the silence of the hall. He made the words sound like the names of unfamiliar deities.
Or maybe, if you want a more recent reference, True Detective with the characters plagued by supernatural elements.
And, oh by the way, this collection won the World Fantasy award in 2013.
This is a short story collection, but it has the heft of a novel, because each story represents a different case explored by a police officer over his 24 years in the service, told in chronological order. These are gritty tales set in the region around Birmingham, England. I mention Dragnet, because Joel Lane has a terse evocative delivery, in keeping with his narrator who is reporting each case as if it is a report. There’s more to this than just the reporting, of course, because the narrator brings up critical and vivid details, the mark of Lane’s expertise as a story teller.
For example, this description: The small window was crusted with loose flakes of sleet, over-lapping and falling away like dead skin.
Each story here is a case, but what gives the book its real heft is the smattering details told in each story about the policeman’s home life, about his relationships. This information may be no more than a paragraph or two from each story, but it is here that we get a real arc to the narrator’s life. The fact that his main focus is on the cases, rather than his home, is telling. I grew up reading Marvel comics, and I can see parallels here in the story telling to what I read in Spiderman: even though each issue of Spiderman focused on the villains, these didn’t stick around long—only an issue or two, until a new villain made an appearance—but the relationships of Peter Parker to his friends and girl-friends continued to gradually evolve, even though you might only get a page or two of this personal information each issue. So it is in Where Furnaces Burn with the stories and the personal information.
Published in 2012, this book is perhaps now even more relevant than it was then, because it often deals with characters and issues that precipitated Brexit and the new jingoism of America. To quote from one story, where a speaker is addressing a crowd of neo-Fascists:
“Good evening. We are here tonight for one reason. Law and order.” His thin voice cut through the silence of the hall. He made the words sound like the names of unfamiliar deities.
October 8, 2022
No one wrote about the horror born of despair, loneliness and hopelessness quite the way British author Joel Lane did, before he passed away prematurely at age 50. "Where Furnaces Burn" is best approached one or two stories at a time. The bleakness portrayed in these working class towns and cities in the Midlands can almost be too relentless at times. Still, the empathy implicit in these stories, and Lane's clean, precise prose mitigates even the darkest of these tales, and enables to reader to appreciate them for what they are, deeply cut slices of beautifully rendered horror.
May 10, 2014
Supernatural detective stories with shades of Ligotti and Barker; this deserved the World Fantasy Award. Lane deserves to have a much larger readership (and in time no doubt will, film rights anyone?), and this might be the best 'horror' book I've read in a few years. If you liked True Detective and don't mind truly mysterious, metaphoric, and weird denouements, then you might love this as much as I did.
November 5, 2020
This was my first experience of Joel Lane and I am left speechless.
"Where Furnaces Burn" follows a Police Officer through the tumultuous years of his life and the supernatural cases that have changed him, culminating in his exodus and reincarnation. Incredible writing that captures the sick heart of the Black Country and insidious effects it has on its people.
"Where Furnaces Burn" follows a Police Officer through the tumultuous years of his life and the supernatural cases that have changed him, culminating in his exodus and reincarnation. Incredible writing that captures the sick heart of the Black Country and insidious effects it has on its people.
March 22, 2024
The best short story collection I've probably ever read, dark, grungy, symbolic, laconic and masterfully written. Its stories rarely have defined endings, but everything there feels so finished and neatly rounded up I could weep
January 3, 2024
Every time I give a Joel Lane book less than three stars it physically pains me, but there's something about this collection that did absolutely nothing for me. Look, I really like detective stories. I'm in love with Joel Lane's prose. I'm not even opposed to a little supernatural or horror bent to my detective stories.
The stories here blend together, and though, again, I'm in love with his dreamy, atmospheric, yet also strangely cold prose (he writes like if Ian Curtis wrote fiction), even the best prose in the world cannot withstand the repetitive nature of the stories. It also doesn't help that the stories in this collection are definitely more on the cosmic horror and dark, urban fantasy side of his work than what I prefer- my favorite stories by his are the more reality-based ones, particularly the ones that deal with grief and mental illness. Often, I wondered if this was more the kind of collection where I should have read a story or two every couple of weeks, reading the book slowly over the course of a few months, instead of reading it straight through in a day or three, but, admittedly, I'm not naturally inclined to that style of reading.
The Lane book that's the closest in comparison to this is definitely The Witnesses Are Gone, his cosmic horror novella that also didn't really work for me. Interesting, both of them also feature straight male protagonists versus his two full-length novels, From Blue to Black and The Blue Mask, which got high ratings from me and both also happen to have gay male characters at the helm. Maybe Lane just couldn't write straight men...
The stories here blend together, and though, again, I'm in love with his dreamy, atmospheric, yet also strangely cold prose (he writes like if Ian Curtis wrote fiction), even the best prose in the world cannot withstand the repetitive nature of the stories. It also doesn't help that the stories in this collection are definitely more on the cosmic horror and dark, urban fantasy side of his work than what I prefer- my favorite stories by his are the more reality-based ones, particularly the ones that deal with grief and mental illness. Often, I wondered if this was more the kind of collection where I should have read a story or two every couple of weeks, reading the book slowly over the course of a few months, instead of reading it straight through in a day or three, but, admittedly, I'm not naturally inclined to that style of reading.
The Lane book that's the closest in comparison to this is definitely The Witnesses Are Gone, his cosmic horror novella that also didn't really work for me. Interesting, both of them also feature straight male protagonists versus his two full-length novels, From Blue to Black and The Blue Mask, which got high ratings from me and both also happen to have gay male characters at the helm. Maybe Lane just couldn't write straight men...
November 5, 2023
This is a collection of 26 short stories that blur the occult detective story with urban noir fiction.
As someone from the Midlands, I found “Where Furnaces Burn” to be a captivating read. Although the book is not set in the Midlands I remember, the writing was engaging and consumable
The stories offer a glimpse of the myths and terrors buried within the industrial landscape. The author, Joel Lane, was a British novelist, short story writer, poet, critic, and anthology editor.
The book is a captivating read, even if you’re not from the Midlands. The writing is engaging and consumable, and the stories are well-crafted. The book is a true modern classic of weird fiction that cemented Lane’s place as one of the most important and distinctive British writers of the weird. If you’re a fan of horror, weird fiction, or just good storytelling,
As someone from the Midlands, I found “Where Furnaces Burn” to be a captivating read. Although the book is not set in the Midlands I remember, the writing was engaging and consumable
The stories offer a glimpse of the myths and terrors buried within the industrial landscape. The author, Joel Lane, was a British novelist, short story writer, poet, critic, and anthology editor.
The book is a captivating read, even if you’re not from the Midlands. The writing is engaging and consumable, and the stories are well-crafted. The book is a true modern classic of weird fiction that cemented Lane’s place as one of the most important and distinctive British writers of the weird. If you’re a fan of horror, weird fiction, or just good storytelling,
November 18, 2019
This was hard work. For a start (which matters to me more than it must do to some) the physical book itself was amateur - too-tight margins and bright white paper - but also this didn't feel like a collection of short stories so much as an assemblage of repetitive potential scenes for several novels, almost all of which involves violence and gruesome bloodshed, which got a bit much after a while, hence the age it's take to get through it.
Disappointing.
Disappointing.
April 8, 2024
I bought this book on the basis that it was recommended as a book with urban magic based in the Black Country. I just found it very dark with a rather strange police officer protagonist, and a lot of mouldy walls. It was just not my cup of tea. If it is recommended to you because you like the Rivers of London or Severed Streets books, it is not in the least bit like them. It is a series of short stories with a supernatural flavour to each but it is unremittingly grim.
March 10, 2025
Well, this was something. Linked short story collection about an unnamed British cop operating mostly in 1990s Birmingham, dealing with supernatural menaces that mostly leave a lot of unexplained deaths in their wake as his personal life slowly falls apart. Overall the effect is bleak and intense.
January 4, 2021
A great great book. RIP Joel Lane.
The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long to post here.
Above is its conclusion.
The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long to post here.
Above is its conclusion.
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January 5, 2021Too dark and grim for me these days, couldn’t finish it...
August 25, 2022
3.5 ⭐
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