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A Cold Dark Place
A Collection of 16 short horror stories.
(Not for children)
(Not for children)
282 pages, Paperback
First published April 28, 2009
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 4, 2022
I came across Lee Betteridge's writing in the Thirteen anthology edited by Andrew Hannon. I was impressed with his often creepy, often disgusting stories above most of the others and bought this collection to see if the rest of his writing was as effective elsewhere. It's the first book I've ever purchased through Lulu Press. It's interesting reading a self-published book because you honestly never know what you're going to get. It could be a real diamond in the rough, that just hasn't yet found the audience it deserves, or it could be absolutely awful, pushed through to print by sheer force of will on the author's part.
A Cold, Dark Place sits somewhere in the middle. Lee Betteridge's stories are much, much better than a lot of the self-published horror I've come across. They are varied in tone and subject matter, running the gamut from body horror to slashers that almost read like a Stuart Macbride crime thriller. Betteridge's writing is unpolished but creative, and with a sensitive editor this could be a really solid horror collection.
There are a couple of clunkers, notably the story about the man who willingly infects old school bullies with HIV. This story was distasteful largely because it perpetuates the idea that people who are HIV-positive are dangerous. It was also ignorant, and it was clear that Betteridge had done really minimal research into the virus before writing the story. It is enormously unlikely that a healthy person who takes their medication will be able to pass HIV on to someone through one instance of unprotected sex, and the idea that it happens so easily was clearly rooted in the panic, paranoia, and fear that many people felt around AIDS in the eighties. This outdated attitude brought down the rest of the collection.
I'm certainly glad to have taken a risk on this collection. Most of the stories were really entertaining, highly readable, and didn't feel like yarns I'd read a thousand times before. I commend Betteridge on writing a largely very competent collection of gross-out spooky tales.
A Cold, Dark Place sits somewhere in the middle. Lee Betteridge's stories are much, much better than a lot of the self-published horror I've come across. They are varied in tone and subject matter, running the gamut from body horror to slashers that almost read like a Stuart Macbride crime thriller. Betteridge's writing is unpolished but creative, and with a sensitive editor this could be a really solid horror collection.
There are a couple of clunkers, notably the story about the man who willingly infects old school bullies with HIV. This story was distasteful largely because it perpetuates the idea that people who are HIV-positive are dangerous. It was also ignorant, and it was clear that Betteridge had done really minimal research into the virus before writing the story. It is enormously unlikely that a healthy person who takes their medication will be able to pass HIV on to someone through one instance of unprotected sex, and the idea that it happens so easily was clearly rooted in the panic, paranoia, and fear that many people felt around AIDS in the eighties. This outdated attitude brought down the rest of the collection.
I'm certainly glad to have taken a risk on this collection. Most of the stories were really entertaining, highly readable, and didn't feel like yarns I'd read a thousand times before. I commend Betteridge on writing a largely very competent collection of gross-out spooky tales.
Displaying 1 of 1 review