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Demonized
Welcome to Christopher Fowler's latest collection of stories of urban dread, designed to fill your waking dreams with dark fears and even darker laughter. A journalist spends a nerve-wracking weekend in the company of Nazis. A tropical holiday takes a nasty turn thanks to a troupe of monkeys, and a waitress challenges a sinister customer in a night restaurant. A tailor plots to escape his execution, London is overrun with rats, serial killers fall in love, and revenge backfires on the unfaithful. As our lives and deaths grow ever stranger, housewives, students and executives all find themselves in situations that become increasingly disturbing. Fowler's powerful narratives are subtly affecting and will make you think twice about the way you look at the world around you.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
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About the author
Christopher Fowler
264 books1,283 followersLibrarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
Christopher Fowler was an English writer known for his Bryant & May mystery series, featuring two Golden Age-style detectives navigating modern London. Over his career, he authored fifty novels and short story collections, along with screenplays, video games, graphic novels, and audio plays. His psychological thriller Little Boy Found was published under the pseudonym L.K. Fox.
Fowler's accolades include multiple British Fantasy Awards, the Last Laugh Award, the CWA Dagger in the Library, and the inaugural Green Carnation Award. He was inducted into the Detection Club in 2021. Beyond crime fiction, his works ranged from horror (Hell Train, Nyctophobia) to memoir (Paperboy, Film Freak). His column Invisible Ink explored forgotten authors, later compiled into The Book of Forgotten Authors.
Fowler lived between London and Barcelona with his husband, Peter Chapman.
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
Christopher Fowler was an English writer known for his Bryant & May mystery series, featuring two Golden Age-style detectives navigating modern London. Over his career, he authored fifty novels and short story collections, along with screenplays, video games, graphic novels, and audio plays. His psychological thriller Little Boy Found was published under the pseudonym L.K. Fox.
Fowler's accolades include multiple British Fantasy Awards, the Last Laugh Award, the CWA Dagger in the Library, and the inaugural Green Carnation Award. He was inducted into the Detection Club in 2021. Beyond crime fiction, his works ranged from horror (Hell Train, Nyctophobia) to memoir (Paperboy, Film Freak). His column Invisible Ink explored forgotten authors, later compiled into The Book of Forgotten Authors.
Fowler lived between London and Barcelona with his husband, Peter Chapman.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 22, 2025
Loved this collection, well I love all Fowler's story collections, I think he is one of the best out there and I am amazed that there are not more reviews of this book. If you have read his other collections then you will not need my encouragement to read this one. If you are coming to his work for the first time then you are in for a treat. After completing this one go on to his other collections of stories and discover more wonderful writing.
May 1, 2017
In a long career of excellent writing, 2004 was something of a red-letter year for Christopher Fowler. In 2004 the British Fantasy Society awarded him Best Novel for “Full Dark House”, the first in the formal Bryant & May series which now numbers thirteen novels, plus associated works, at the time of writing. That year also saw the publication of “Breathe”, which would win Best Novella at the same awards in 2005. Fowler would also win Best Short Story at those awards in 2004 for “American Waitress”, which is among 17 stories in “Demonized”, his eighth collection of short stories and, as the award suggests, ones that shows repeated writing of short stories has in no way diminished Fowler’s imagination or quality.
In places, “Demonized” has Fowler as his most whimsical. “We’re Going Where the Sun Shines Brightly” does, as the title suggests, take a lead from the film “Summer Holiday”, but twists it into darker places. Both the film references and the twisting of the mundane are Fowler trademarks, as is “Feral”, a typical piece of whimsy that will never make you look at certain animals in quite the same way again. “Hitler’s Houseguest” has a serious ending, but is based around a superb idea of a journalist with Tourette’s invited to a retreat at Hitler’s house. “Where They Went Wrong” is an interesting turn at a serial killer story that doesn’t take itself too seriously and “Cairo 6.1” is a novel take on the prospect of assisted dying, but with a brilliantly irreverent ending.
However, there are some straight horror stories here as well. “Seven Feet” evokes James Herbert’s “Rats” trilogy, except that it’s not only the rats you have to look out for. “The Green Man” is another story of nature outsmarting man, this time in the form of a macaque. “Hop” is a cross between crime and the supernatural and “The Scorpion Jacket” is a fantasy tale with a very clever and very dark twist
Fowler also writes beautifully about people. “Dealing With the Situation” is a response to a crisis with several unexpected turns and a tone that reminds me a little of his novel “Psychoville”. “Above the Glass Ceiling” shows how cut-throat the business world can be and treads familiar territory to one of Fowler’s own earlier stories, “The Cleansing”. “Personal Space” is a woman trapped in her own home and again covers an earlier Fowler story from a different angle and “Emotional Response” is as close as Fowler comes to a love story, although being Fowler, it’s not as simple as just that, nor is the award-winning “American Waitress”, which starts as a piece of small-town Americana, but heads into slightly more twisted territory.
I love this collection, as Fowler has given his imagination full rein and it’s pulled the stories here in all sorts of strange directions. He veers from the whimsical to the serious, character driven to descriptive, sublime to ridiculous. Perhaps the only thing obviously missing from this collection that Fowler fans would be used to is his love letter to London, but it could possibly be argued that the whimsy of “Feral” fills that purpose here. Even without story filling this gap, this is Fowler as his best and this is certainly one of his better collections of short stories, as befitting the creative peak that his list of awards showed he was in around this time.
In places, “Demonized” has Fowler as his most whimsical. “We’re Going Where the Sun Shines Brightly” does, as the title suggests, take a lead from the film “Summer Holiday”, but twists it into darker places. Both the film references and the twisting of the mundane are Fowler trademarks, as is “Feral”, a typical piece of whimsy that will never make you look at certain animals in quite the same way again. “Hitler’s Houseguest” has a serious ending, but is based around a superb idea of a journalist with Tourette’s invited to a retreat at Hitler’s house. “Where They Went Wrong” is an interesting turn at a serial killer story that doesn’t take itself too seriously and “Cairo 6.1” is a novel take on the prospect of assisted dying, but with a brilliantly irreverent ending.
However, there are some straight horror stories here as well. “Seven Feet” evokes James Herbert’s “Rats” trilogy, except that it’s not only the rats you have to look out for. “The Green Man” is another story of nature outsmarting man, this time in the form of a macaque. “Hop” is a cross between crime and the supernatural and “The Scorpion Jacket” is a fantasy tale with a very clever and very dark twist
Fowler also writes beautifully about people. “Dealing With the Situation” is a response to a crisis with several unexpected turns and a tone that reminds me a little of his novel “Psychoville”. “Above the Glass Ceiling” shows how cut-throat the business world can be and treads familiar territory to one of Fowler’s own earlier stories, “The Cleansing”. “Personal Space” is a woman trapped in her own home and again covers an earlier Fowler story from a different angle and “Emotional Response” is as close as Fowler comes to a love story, although being Fowler, it’s not as simple as just that, nor is the award-winning “American Waitress”, which starts as a piece of small-town Americana, but heads into slightly more twisted territory.
I love this collection, as Fowler has given his imagination full rein and it’s pulled the stories here in all sorts of strange directions. He veers from the whimsical to the serious, character driven to descriptive, sublime to ridiculous. Perhaps the only thing obviously missing from this collection that Fowler fans would be used to is his love letter to London, but it could possibly be argued that the whimsy of “Feral” fills that purpose here. Even without story filling this gap, this is Fowler as his best and this is certainly one of his better collections of short stories, as befitting the creative peak that his list of awards showed he was in around this time.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews