Customer Reviews

Killer Camera

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In 2008 Horowitz's publishers decided to republish his old 1999 Horror anthologies Horowitz Horror: Stories You'll Wish You Never Read and Horowitz Horror 2 (also published under the title More Horowitz Horror). But instead of just reproducing those two volumes in their entirety they chose to divide them up into separately sold smaller books containing usually two (but sometimes three short stories). To annoy those who maybe have one of the anthologies already they decided that these new smaller books would take one story from Horowitz Horror 1 and the other from Horowitz Horror 2. So if you plan on reading all these books it's obviously much better value for money to buy the two anthologies than all these books separately. Incidentally I have no idea why Amazon has put the words (Alex Rider) in brackets after this title as it has nothing to do with that series which came along after Horowitz had made his name as children's horror author and decided to get into the action spy genre (where granted he has probably been a lot more successful), nor is Alex in any of these books.

Anyway back to reviewing Killer Camera. The two stories in this book are obviously the title story Killer Camera as well as Light Moves. The first involves a young boy called Jamie who is visiting a car boot sale to find a present for his father. He doesn't want to spend too much and can't find anything but junk amongst the boots anyway. As he's about to leave a car drives in that actually has decent stuff in the boot. Amongst the items Jamie finds a really good camera which he buys. Inside the camera is also a used roll of film. When his father opens his present, Jamie's mother takes a picture of the tree in the backyard. It is dead the next day, the same fate falls upon the family dog who was next to have its picture taken. Jamie decides to have the film developed and learns the horrible secret of his gift.

Light moves also revolves around a gift. This time the son Henry, receives the gift of a used computer from his father. The owner, a sports journalist just died and everyone was ransacking his office and claiming his stuff. Henry's father claimed the computer. Henry doesn't like the computer, but what can he say. Henry awakens in the night to discover someone has turned the computer on, only thing is its not plugged in. A message awaits Henry on the screen.

If you've only read the Groosham Grange series this series of books is a little bit heavier in subject matter. Groosham Grange and its sequel The Unholy Grail are a bit more cartoony monster horror style than these more realistic thriller scare stories.