 Excellent supernatural anthology themed around the Home Counties of England I live in Streatham (south London) which, I think, is technically within the boundaries of Surrey, which makes me the perfect candidate to review Terror of the Home Counties, edited by Paul Finch. This is the twelfth in the long running anthology series which has already featured spooky shenanigans at the Lake District, the Cotswalds, East Anglia, London, Wales, the Scottish Highlands, and others. Starting way back in 2011, I guess we had to get to Surrey and the Home Counties eventually! For those of you not acquainted with the geography of the UK, the Home Counties are the surrounding areas and towns which back onto London and its outlying towns. I do not recall reading any of the other books in the series, but considering this is number twelve in the sequence, there was little sign of fatigue and I thought the overall quality was commendably high, with some excellent entries. In between each tale there was also a historical interlude regarding a ‘true’ haunting, myth or spooky going on, these did not impress me as much and came across as extracts you might stumble upon in Wikipedia or real haunting style books, such as Christopher Maynard’s Usborne’s World of the Unknown: Ghosts. Thankfully, they were all relatively short and were not such a major diversion. Foreign readers might even find them quaint or considerably more informative than I did. Before long I found myself skimming through them, partly because I was eager to dig into the next story. The anthology opens with a corker, Steve Duffy’s In the English Rain, which is about a 16-year-old-boy who lives next door to a house supposedly owned by famous Beatle John Lennon, which was obviously set when Lennon was still alive. He uses this musical tip-bit to impress his best friend Sally Holden (who he wishes was something more) “so what’s it like living next door to a Beatle?” she says. They go exploring the house together (he would rather be exploring her) and as well as a convincing supernatural turn, the story beautifully incapsulates what it is like to be sixteen and in lust. A crackerjack opening to the anthology which also has a convincing sense of time and place. Paul Finch’s The Doom was another of my favourites, which asks interesting questions about faith. Reverend Bilks and his wife work at St Brownwyn’s Priority church and enjoy a cosy village existence where the Church of England is all about fayres, bake sales and raffles. Nobody talks about God too much, who might be a distraction from day to day life. However, whilst the church is being restored a brutal and horrific Middle Ages mural is uncovered and its depiction of Hell and punishment is incredibly graphic. It quickly becomes a tourist attraction, and the Reverend gets into an uncomfortable conversation with a visitor who has something nasty on his conscience (or does he?) who asks him questions of faith he struggles to answer. Proceedings build nicely to a terrific ending with great imagery. Love Leaves Last by Mick Sims was an absolute blast and has a very quirky concept at its centre. Two couples, head to a stately home to secure a business property deal and when they meet their hosts are given a key rule which they must follow at all costs: no sex in the house! Of course, rules are there to be broken, are they not? Put yourself in the shoes of the guests, it really was a strange request, and you will quickly find out why. The hook was probably better than the ending, but it was still very enjoyable. An anthology based around the Home Counties would not be complete without an inclusion featuring a posh boarding school, of which there are many peppering the outlying countryside. With Reggie Oliver’s entertaining Monkey’s, we head to Eton and spent some time with three schoolboys in their final term at Eton College. Set in 1970s, but narrated many years later, the boys go for a relaxing afternoon row, where it is customary to stop for a drink on an island manned by an Eton College employee Billy. Expecting a quiet afternoon, Billy is behaving erratically, and things do not go as intended. Overall, I was surprised I was not familiar with more of the authors featured, however, I was delighted to come across Helen Grant’s excellent Chesham. I have read a number of Helen’s novels, who is both a highly accomplished YA author (I recommend The Vanishing of Katharina Linden (2009), The Glass Demon (2010) and Wish Me Dead (2011) as well as a writer of adult fiction, including the excellent Ghost (2018). This story finds Helen in very melancholic mood with a woman clearing out the house of her recently deceased mother and whilst going through her stuff is triggered by various things she finds, including pictures of her mother pregnant at a peculiar time in her life, which leads to uneasy questions involving herself. The anthology closes with another beauty, and I cannot say I was prepared for a dystopian(ish) style story set in Stevenage! (If you are not from the UK look it up on Google Maps….) with Jason Gould’s clever The old Man in Apartment Ninety. A mother tells her kid whatever you do, never go to Apartment 90, as there is a weird shimmering light coming from under the door. We quickly realise the boy has never been outside and the reason why Apartment 90 is out of bounds is not what you think. Of course, kids being kids, you know where he is heading….. The last of my favourites was Steven J Dines’s The Gravedigger of Witchfield which is the first Covid-19 inspired stories I have seen in print which takes us to Witchfield, in Buckinghamshire. Teenager Ben’s dad is a gravedigger and is upset when a famous DJ buys one of the local mansions, has wild parties, but donates to the local church funds to smooth things over. There is a tricky relationship between the two and when Ben tries to tell his father about his poor performance in his GCSE mock exams he goes for a walk and gate-crashes the masked party, and stumbles upon the last thing he expects. The story heads in bizarre directions and pulls the rabbit out of the hat with a wild ending. I do not have the time to mention every story, but these were several others which caught my eye. In Gail-Nina Anderson’s The Old, Cold Clay a little boy dies and a former local to the village, who now works in television, takes a close interest in the case, perhaps too close. In Andrew Hook’s My Somnambulant Heart, the narrator John Harris, meets up with a man (now a successful DJ) he bullied as a kid and begins to ruminate on what went on all those years ago. Tom Johnstone’s The Topsy-Turvy Ones jumps between 1649 and the Middle Ages with a young couple out rambling looking for a location to film a scene of a low budget film when the past truly does come to life. I spent some time in Luton in the 1990s and so enjoyed reading about Jason and Brandon’s get-rich-quick scheme which involved the local zoo in Allen Ashley’s Taking Tusk Mountain. The final word goes to David J Howe’s Moses in which two boys go out camping, almost as a dare, knowing full well something might lurk in the local river, one chickens out and runs home, then something nasty comes calling. There was much to enjoy in Terror of the Home Counties and if you are a fan of short stories, especially the British variety, then this anthology is well worth closer inspection. Tony Jones  The gardens and orchards of the Home Counties. Quintessential England. Cottages, sleepy lanes. But also alchemy, devil cults and village curses. Where country house murders happen for real, evil landlords slaughter their guests, and Hellfire Clubs celebrate the powers of darkness … An anthology of horror stories using the Home Counties, its myths and legends, as their basis.   Comments are closed.
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