Terror Tales of London

Terror Tales

by Paul Finch (Editor), Adam L.G. Nevill (Editor), Mark Morris (Contributor)

The city of London - whose gold-paved streets are lost in choking fog and echo to the trundling of plague-carts, whose twisting back alleys ring to cries of "Murder!," whose awful tower is stained with the blood of princes and paupers alike . . . The night stalker of Hammersmith . . . The brutal butchery of Holborn . . . The depraved spirit of Sydenham . . . The fallen angel of Dalston . . . The murder den of Notting Hill . . . The haunted sewer of Bermondsey . . . The red-eyed ghoul of Highgate . . . And many more chilling tales from Adam Nevill, Mark Morris, Christopher Fowler, Nina Allan, Nicholas Royle, and other award-winning masters and mistresses of the macabre . . . Edited by Paul Finch, author of STALKERS.

Genres: Horror, Anthologies

240 pages, Paperback

First published May 24, 2013

About the author

Paul Finch is a former cop and journalist, now full-time writer. Having originally written for the television series THE BILL plus children's animation and DOCTOR WHO audio dramas, he went on to write horror, but is now best known for his crime / thriller fiction.

He won the British Fantasy Award twice and the International Horror Guild Award, but since then has written two parallel series of hard-hitting crime novels, the Heck and the Lucy Clayburn novels, of which three titles have become best-sellers.

Paul lives in Wigan, Lancashire, UK with his wife and children.

Reviews

[Blair]

Read Nina Allan's story 'The Tiger'. Here, as if by magic, is the sequel I had wanted to 'Wilkolak'. In this story, we find Kip did live to tell the tale, and reported Dennis Croft's photographs to the police. He doesn't appear in 'The Tiger', though – it's about Croft, who has now had his conviction overturned after ten years in prison. Yet he himself seems uncertain of whether he committed the crime. He has nightmares that may be memories; he struggles to remember anything about the day it happened. When he's invited to join a support group, he reluctantly goes along, only to find himself drawn into a sinister scene.

The style is quite sparse compared to much of Allan's work, and gives less away than her stories usually do. For it to work, Croft must have limited interiority. But this doesn't mean the story isn't effective. The awful, nameless dread evoked in the scene at Symes' house put me in mind of Robert Aickman's 'The Hospice'.

As with 'Wilkolak', at the end I wanted to know more. Though the subject matter is dark, part of me wishes Allan would write a novel about these characters.