In the last few years there has been a rise of what I like to call  H-Noir, or horror noir.  You know the sort of book where a wise cracking, hard drinking detective gets pulled into a seedy underworld populated with all kinds of supernatural denizens.   As a rule I like these sort of stories, I love horror and I love Noir, however as with most things these sort of stories quickly merge into one another, with far too many cookie cutter plots, far too many rugged heroes  and far to many dames and broads to be rescued.  At times it feels like the Maltese Falcon has packed its bags and flown south for the winter. 

Then just when everything seems lost after heading down another Blind Alley, the King of The Underworld bursts  forth and  takes the reader on a fantastic journey through the dark underbelly of Las Vegas.  Gardner Goldsmith's Bite, is a powerhouse of a novella,which delivers  a rapid one two punch of tight H-Noir thrills straight to the cranium.   

Sylvester Cole is brilliant creation, on the surface he sounds like every other hero in this sort of book, but look closer this is a a character with depth.  Gardner Goldsmith has cleverly given us a leading man who is nearing the end of his story.  The Dark Past of Sylvester is only hinted at we know he did something wrong, something that forced him to leave his old life behind and become a Voice In The Wind, killing those monsters that haunt our darkest nightmares.  

Cole if a fabulous creation, he reads like an old prize fighter, proud, strong, world weary, almost broken, but refusing to go down for the final count.  He wants out, and is in the process of getting out of the game. But a meeting with a dazzling dame at a bar drags Cole back into the dirty business.   

What follows is a tense, character driven, yet action packed narrative that blows the cobwebs from this already stale genre.  Goldsmith's writing is assured and witty, he weaves cracking dialogue  with explosive action sequences to create a story that takes the reader to dark and scary part of the city where the Sidewalk Ends.  


Bite is my kind of story, its the sort of story that makes me want to go out and find every other piece of writing that the author has published.  This is a  bloody, gritty and whiskey soaked masterpiece of vampiric action, that, excuse the pun, puts the bite back into the vampire genre.  

If you are reading this Gardner, I want to know more about Cole, so come on  lets know more about his journey and write some more books about him.  

What would you do if your career began with promise, if your plans for life seemed well on their way, but, due to your own mistakes, the bottom suddenly dropped out?

What if that clean, prosperous, happy family life was lost, and you were left to slide deeper and deeper into the “underground”, each strange job more obscure and bizarre than the next?

Where would you land? How long could you stomach that world?

Could you do the kind of job that others fear or don’t believe exists?

Sylvester Cole can. He has for too many years, and now he wants out. Long ago on track to become a literature professor, Sylv made one big mistake, and he’s paid for it since. Maybe he’s made himself pay. He’s not exactly sure.

But one thing is certain, now in his mid-fifties, he’s had enough. He’s saved up his cash and gold. He’s bought a plane ticket out of Vegas, and he’s ready to retire.

Silvester Cole wants one chance at life.

Because Sylvester Cole is sick of re-killing the dead.

But when Sylv wanders into his favorite watering hole to say goodbye to his friends of convenience, he’s confronted with an opportunity of a different sort: a girl, who just might give him that chance to snatch life and love out of the hands of fate – by re-killing one last time.

“Bite” is a noir novella that brings you back to what horror is all about: emotional, psychological, spiritual stakes. Its voice is real, and its action is aggressive.

Horror fiction has many faces, many moods and many styles. It can chill you to the bones with the most atmospheric  of passages, turn your stomach with some gross out imagery, or it can make you smile with a wild sense of abandonment.  But above all else horror should entertain. 

So when you get your hands on an anthology that manages to do all of the above and more you know you have gotten your hands on a rather special book.  

Demons and Devilry is the fourth anthology from Hersham Horror.  Featuring five stories based around the sadly neglected sub genre of Black Magic and Demonology from some of the best writers working today, Demons and Devilry captures the very essence of what makes for a great horror read.  And when an anthology has stories from both Thana Niveau and the John Llewellyn probert you just know you are in for a fabulous time. 

Remember all those classic films, those films that scared you as a kid, iconic films featuring the likes of Christopher Lee and Vincent Price.  Those very British horror films where a tweed jacket, a hero who looked like your dad  and dusty tome were all that were required to defeat Lucifer and his minions. Now remember that giddy feeling of enjoyment that those films brought to you, you want to feel that again don't you?  Well you are in luck for this book is like one of those films.  

Peter Mark May's The Abhorant Man has the honour of being first up to bat in this rather fine anthology.  Starting of in Carthage in 146 BC,  where the Roman army is in the process of sacking the city, the Priests  of Baal are in possession of an ancient item that just may be the key to saving their city.  However as things are wont to be in such tales things don't go according to plan and soon something sinister is unleashed.  Fast forward to 1924, and a team of specialist are on their way to the City to investigate the discovery a temple.  This is no ordinary Society, they have been charged with protecting us from Demons, spirits, and the dark denizens that inhabit darkest shadows of our world.  Once there the team encounters that beast that was unleashed all those years previously with shocking results.  

The Abhorant Man is a great start to the anthology, the story rushes along at breakneck speed with some great ideas and imagery peppering the narrative as it moves towards a chilling and memorable conclusion. Full of derring do and stiff upper lips The Abhorant Man is a great adventure horror story.   However, I felt the overall story was suffocated ever so slightly by the stories length.   This is a story that would have benefited from a longer treatment.    If you are reading this Peter I would like to see more from these characters.  

Thana Niveau's Little Devils, casts aside the derring do of the the previous story for a far more intimate and personal story of devilment.  Sisters can't live with them can't take them to a building site with a group  of your friends for  some illicit adventuring.  Arabella and her little sister  are doing just this.  Soon they will discover that there are worse things than falling into wet cement and discarded power tools lurking around this building site.  

Thana's story  drips with tension, and terror, with an ever building sense of dread that just oozes from the page as the children slowly discover the true terror of what awaits them.  With a truly terrifying  and unexpected ending Little Devils  is a dark masterpiece of of writing, just don't be fooled by the jaunty title this is brilliant creepy horror story. 

John Llewellyn Probert's The Devil In The Details, takes a rather more lighthearted approach. Opening with cinematic panoramic description, where the camera sweeps across the stormy Welsh cliffs along the headland to dark mysterious house where devilish things are afoot. We meet Maxwell Chantry, and he has a problem,  he has been waiting years for  the stars to align and he needs a Virgin to sacrifice in his ritual.  First World  problems they are a  real downer.  

Those of you who are regular readers will know that I am a huge fan of JLP's writing.  There is something special about his works that speaks to  me.  They have a power to bring a smile to my face no matter my mood.  And this story does that with with great gusto.  Mysterious Mansion, dastardly villains, evil plots and black magic all come together in one  gloriously gratifying tale that will not fail to impress you. 

David Williamson's The Scryer has a similar base theme to that of JLP's story but tackles in it in a different way.  Where JLP's story is a glorious 1970's style cinematic romp, David Williamson's story is like Thana's one a much a more intimate and personal take.  

Daniel Kelly is not just a loser,  like the rest of his family he's not a particularly nice man. When A Mr Pink knocks on his door with news that will change Kelly's life forever things take a rather unpleasant turn of events.  Kelly is the heir to an unknown ancestral home the last living direct relative of the infamous Alchemist and Scryer Edward Kelly.  The discover of old chest and a mysterious mirror will can only lead to tragedy and death.    This is tight little take that handles Daniel Kelly's mental descent really well, however like the initial story in this anthology I felt the story could have done with being a little bit longer, just to give the story some room to breath. 

Stuart Young's Guardian Angel   has the honour of rounding off this anthology.  It is also the longest story in the anthology, closer to a novellette than a short story.  Young makes excellent use of the expanded length to deliver the most complex  story of the anthology.  This is for want of a better word the most adult story of the anthology, with Young letting fly with a tense highly sexual story involving both demons and Guardian Angels.  This is an intense action packed story that skillfully splits the narrative into once the action gets going, and boy it really does get going.  I particularly enjoyed how the physical horrors of the earthly realm are just as horrific as those from the spiritual realm.  With the character of Rebecca, Young as created and excellent central character who, much like one if the themes of the story, ascends from being an innocent passive character when we first meet her to  a heroic character who will quite literally save herself.  


Demons & Devilry is a brilliant anthology, one which manages to perfectly balance stories of a lighter tone with more dark and heavy tones.  This is an exceptional anthology, where all of the stories manage to deliver on the entertainment level, and where two thirds of the stories  are exceptional examples of stories within this genre.  If you are looking for some demonic fun, then this book is the ideal book for you.  

Hersham Horror Books Presents 5 original stories from the minds of: Peter Mark May Thana Niveau John Llewellyn Probert David Williamson Stuart Young The Fourth anthology in our PentAnth range brings you five more satanic and demonic tales that hearkens back to an age when Dennis Wheatley was the king of horror.

Lovecraft has always been one of those authors that has always left me a quandary.  I love the scope and imagination of his writing, however his actual writing has always left me cold.  I'll be totally honest and say that I have always preferred when other writers used his Mythos.  Sacrilege I know  but hey that's just me.  
Which brings us to Dreaming in Darkness, a collection of four short stories / novellas from Adrian Chamberlin, John Prescott, Jonathan Green and A J French.  These are all authors whose previous work I have both read and enjoyed immensely, so seeing these four guys had gotten together to produce this book how could I not jump at the chance to read it. 

Kicking off the anthology is  The Order by Aaron J. French.  This is a fantastic story that masterfully combines a police procedural story with a  supernatural end of the world scenario.  Called in to help with the investigation of a brutal murder that hints at supernatural foul play retired  Detective Carl Sanford  is soon drawn into mythos busting story of epic proportions.  On the surface Sanford feels like a typical typical cookie cutter Detective,  however A J French, despite the limitations of the stories length transforms him into a wonderful character.  A character that I would love to see more off.  The incorporation of historical and occultish elements is also handle extremely well  The finale of this story is a chilling one and fits the story like a glove.  This is an excellent way to start this story. 

Next up is Adrian Chamberlin's  Shadrach Besieged a bloodthirsty tale that spans the centuries.  Jerusalem has fallen and it is down to  Massoud to find the sacred spot where he can bury a valuable idol.  He makes to the spot, but is brutally cut down by a group of riders before he can safely bury it.  The story then skips forward 500 years or so to the English civil war.  Where Captain James Palmer company of riders , meet a lone stranger, a stranger that will lead them on bloody and terrifying journey to the Black Church.   

If you are familiar with  the writing of Chamberlin, then you will know what you are getting here.  If you are not familiar with his writing, then buckle up folks you are in for a treat.  This is an amazing story, full of exceptional writing that somehow manages to pile on more and more nightmarish terror on each page.  In a hands of a lesser writer this story could have quickly fallen into cartoonish horror, it is a credit to the talent of Chamberlin that story never crosses over to this side, and remains firmly planted in the dark side.  This is without a doubt one of the best stories I have read in The Mythos in a number of years. 

Jonathan Green's The Serpent's Egg,  not only takes the Mythos as a reference point, he also throws in Stoker's The Lair of The White Worm.  Much like the author in the story Green is looking to add a new twist to both the Mythos and Worm story, something which he manages with great success.  The Serpent's Egg is a wonderful story of the occult, full of  libraries of occult tomes, mysterious chanting emanating from secret caves to a full on orgy with what looks like the whole population of the village.  Where this story excels is in the way the  felling of paranoia and mistrust of others is conveyed, in may ways it has a similar haunting and ethereal feeling as The Wicker Man,  which in itself is no mean feat, which Green uses expertly to layer on the tension and unease, until a wonderfully horrific last act. 

John Prescott's story New Heaven's  takes a rather unique treatment of the source material. Rather than having a story where The Old Ones are trying to break through into our world, Prescott takes the brave decision to rip our world from our rather nice place in  the multiverse and plunk it right in the heart of the Old One's corner of the universe.  

It's a brave move starting a novella in this manner, how can you hope to top an opening like that?  Possibly by writing a tense action packed narrative that throws ever increasing horrific set pieces in your face like a bucket of cold blood?  That will work for me.  Prescott's story perfectly captures the crazy, wild and mind screwing landscape you would expect to find in the old ones universe.  The story is also helped buy some wonderful descriptive passages, especially those that describe the destroyed American landscapes.  How he  managed to pack so much narrative, thrills, tension and characterisation into 42 pages I don't know.  But by Hell he manages it.    

New Heaven is the most original story in this anthology, and is a true work of genius.  

If like me your dreams are always a nightmare, then Dreaming in Darkness  is the perfect book to ignite your dreams. 

Some horror books are very easy to classify, some like this book are slightly harder to so.  On the surface this book could be described as a  simple straight forward supernatural tale full of horrific images and horrific set pieces.  However, scratch below the surface of this well written book and you will find a much darker world. A world where the horror comes not from burning men and menacing Estates, but from the horror of one man's descent into a personal hell and his journey back up through redemption.  

The Estate's anti-hero  Sam O'Donnell, and let us be clear here he is an anti hero, is a wonderful creation on which this whole book is perfectly hinged on.  Sam really is a vile man, a junkie in a suit with a very loose set of moral guidelines, he is the sort of man, who has really no redeeming qualities, with perhaps the exception of the his love for his wife.   In the hands of a lesser writer Sam's character would be a hindrance to the book's narrative.  It would have been all to easy to him a one dimensional caricature, but Craig Saunders has obviously put a lot of time and effort into turning Sam into a  living and breathing character.  


So when Sam suffers a combined heart attack and stroke, his life is thrown into maelstrom of heart wrenching proportions.  Here we see the Sam, a man broken by the death of his daughter, a man whose love for his wife is deep and great that it left him unable to communicate his grief to her.  So after the heart attack they decide to move away from London to a seemingly idyllic estate by the sea, in an attempt to heal both Sam's body and their life together.  


At first everything seems perfect, but slowly and surely the veil is pulled away and the true nature and true terror of The Estate is revealed.  


As I said at the start of this review The Estate is much more than a horror story, this is a story about life, love, the loss of a child, and above all regret.  Craig Saunders expertly weaves these emotional threads through the horror narrative to create a horror novel full of emotion and heart.  Saunders has grounded this story in sympathy, and by the time you have finished reading this story you will have fully understood what it was like to have suffered exactly what sam suffered in this book.