Customer Reviews

The Midnight Man

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Despite starting this book almost a month back, I had deliberately restrained myself from just gobbling the stories, and by allowing myself the opportunity to savour the bitter-sweet-pungent taste of these stories over several nights (and occasional midnights), I can state that by allowing this book to go out-of-print the Silver Salamander people have enabled bad money to drive out good money. These stories should sit at the top level of horror literature, and it doesn't matter whether you fail to typify them into one cupboard or another, or just appreciate them for their brilliant story-telling.

The contents of this book are: -

1) Introduction.
2) He Who Laughs: a sardonic view of humour & consequent popularity, and where it all may lead to.
3) Black Cab: take on an urban myth, combined with paranoia.
4) Man Beast: inversion of the legend of were-beasts.
5) The Song My Sister Sang: one of the most pitiless and grim combinations of childhood trauma and legend of 'sirens' that I have ever read.
6) Yesterday I Flew With The Birds: loss of innocence, and much-much more.
7) The Fractured Man: rise & fall of the mind of a tortured killer.
8) The Crawl: the ultimate scarecrow-cum-slasher story!
9) Deep Blue: what music can do to you.
10) Guilty Party: the ultimate werewolf story (reading of which in the "Mammoth Book of Werewolves" had set me searching for more of Stephen laws' works).
11) Gordy's A-Okay: a little sweet story of guilt & pain being overcome by hope.
12) The Secret: study of paranoia, or something much-much more horrifying?
13) Pot Luck: one of those short-shorts that bring a smile to your face that had become all cloudy.
14) Bleeding Dry: this story could have become a superior addition to the Pan Book of Horror, as well as to any anthology dealing with Dracula in this post-modern world.
15) Junk: a creepy, chilling story of urban horror becoming very-very gothic.
16) An informative 'End Notes' at the end, describing the genesis of these stories.

To sum it up I find it deeply disturbing that such superior story-tellers like Stephen Laws, Stephen Gallagher and Peter Crowther are not publishing stories, and the market is getting flooded by all sorts of "junk"! John Pelan seems to have disappeared, can someone else come up and try to revive the art of writing these chilling short stories by providing them with a haven?

I ordered and paid for the book (Midnight Man by Steven Laws) and was sent the wrong book.
The seller then said that they would refund the money but did not have the book to send.
Sure be nice to get what I ordered.
JY