Secret Story [Hardcover]

Ramsey Campbell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 30, 2006

You're an underpaid civil servant who dreams of chucking it all to become a famous author. You live with your overbearing mother who always seems to interrupt when you're writing a key scene. Who always wants to know why you haven't brought home a nice girl.
What you really are is a writer. A brilliant one, too, though like any writer, you sometimes have a dry spell. Your imagination is dark, your inspiration the terrible things that can happen to a young woman traveling alone . . . .
Suddenly, success! You win a magazine contest--first prize is publication for your terrifying short story about a horrible murder on an underground train. A director wants to make a movie of your award-winning story and wants your input on the script. A pretty young journalist seems to be taking a personal interest in you and your career.
Except.
The family of a girl murdered on the underground threatens to sue you and the magazine for glorifying the grisly details of their daughter's death, despite your insistence that you didn't read the news coverage of the murder. The magazine asks you to supply a different story.
The film director wants you to make a few changes in your story. Especially with the lawsuit hanging over everyone's head.
The journalist's interest turns out to merely be professional.
You've been fired.
And, worst of all, your imagination has run dry. You don't have another story in you.
You'll just have to kill someone new . . .

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Campbell provides a memorably ghoulish answer to the cliché question about where horror writers get their ideas in this suspenseful skin-crawler. Mersey Mouth magazine hopes to promote a local author through its fiction contest and believes it has found him in Dudley Smith, whose story submission vividly recounts a grisly subway murder. What they don't know is that the tale is more truth than fiction: Dudley, a secret psychopath, has for years been writing up his unsolved crimes as splatter thrillers for his own amusement. Enabled by a doting mother and egged on by oblivious publishers, Dudley immerses himself in his "Mr. Killogram" character and spends much of the story setting up editor Patricia Martingale as his next victim. Campbell deftly laces the grim events with subtle insights on the author's responsibility to his characters and the public's appetite for exploitation, which help make this one of his better nonsupernatural shockers. (June)
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Review

"A gripping horror extravaganza. A richly textured tale of modern horror with classic roots, it confirms Campbell's reputation as one of the most formidable dark fantasists working today."--Publishers Weekly (starred review) on The Darkest Part of the Woods

"For more than forty years, Ramsey Campbell has been one of the premier horror writers of the English-speaking world. His latest novel is a creepy, sometimes blackly funny account of a haunted bookshop, and it shows Campbell at the top of his considerable form."--The Washington Post Book World on The Overnight

"[A] horror tour de force. His rich and evocative prose serves to wrap scenes in a dense miasma of disturbing images and shadowy shapes. A high water mark of horror."--Publishers Weekly (starred review) on The Overnight

"A sense of impending doom lingers around the edges of this story, and as the incidents escalate, it becomes more palpable. Psychologically intense, this well-crafted horror tale isn't for the faint of heart."--Romantic Times BookClub Magazine on The Overnight

"Campbell draws the reader into the story slowly, accumulating a wealth of detail and family dynamics. One of the most unsettling voices in horror literature, back in fine, eerie form with The Darkest Part of the Woods."--Fangoria

"Pure dark magic."--Cemetery Dance on The Darkest Part of the Woods

"Campbell's masterpiece. Magically fresh and memorable."--Kirkus Reviews on The Darkest Part of the Woods

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; First Edition edition (May 30, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765316161
• ISBN-13: 978-0765316165
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,575,616 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Startlingly Real!, October 6, 2006

By 

Amy Graham (Scottsdale, AZ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Secret Story (Hardcover)

The "star" of Secret Story is Dudley, a man relegated to a tedious civil servant position and who still lives with his meddling somewhat busybody mother. Secret Story is gritty and real in away that makes for slightly uncomfortable reading...we feel slightly sorry for him, even slightly embarrassed for who he is, yet there is something darker and more menacing underneath Dudley's seemingly bland exterior. As we are introduced to Dudley, he's done something quite unspeakable, but is never traced back to him (and it's apparently not he first time), unfortunately for Dudley, his mum is always meddling, pushing and prodding him to be something more, convinced that the world just doesn't recognize him for the genius he is and feeling that if he just asserted himself a bit he'd get the recognition he deserves...we all know a mother and son like this pair, but they are stereotypically delicious in the details of Dudley's dreary life that we can recognize and understand...even if we don't particularly like it. It is his mother's meddling that starts him on the long road to hell and we all get to watch in uncomfortable silence as Dudley wins a literary competition (which his mother entered him into without his knowledge or consent) and his secret stories suddenly become publicly known...and what happens as Dudley spirals out of control is both chilling and hard to watch.

What makes Secret Story a success is that he's rather an everyman...he could be anybody...anybody could be a Dudley he's that dull guy in the office who no one really notices, yet he's something darker and more malevolent! This tale is well written and realistic in way that'll make you think twice before getting to close to that train platform or wonder if that guy behind you IS following you! Wonderful late night reading! You'll love and hate this story and before you're done; your skin will be crawling! I give it a solid A, it's suitably bleak, drab and depressingly british (which strongly evokes the flavor of Dudley's life) while also managing to be creepy, uncomfortable, and down right inhuman.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great behind the scenes thriller, June 2, 2006

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Secret Story (Hardcover)

Civil servant Dudley Smith writes a short story based on a true crime murder that occurred on an underground train. He entered his work in a Mersey Mouth magazine contest and won. However, the parents of a real victim of an identical homicide threaten to sue Mersey Mouth and Dudley.

Instead of being upset editor Patricia Martingale is euphoric that they found a local talent and encourages Dudley to write more such tales starring "Mr. Killogram". A movie director is also interested. However, unbeknownst to Patricia or her cohorts at Mersey Mouth or perhaps they are just not interested since the bottom line is all that counts, Dudley can only write what he has performed; thus when the movie director asks for script revisions, Dudley needs real life victims to rewrite; when Patricia asks for a magazine article, Dudley needs real victims to write about. At the rate Dudley is going he might win an Oscar for screenwriting and an Agatha in the same year; that is if he is not caught for his realism.

This is a terrific crime thriller that showcases in cleverly restrained ways how Ramsey Campbell believes what the author's obligation is to his reader, his cast especially the lead character and to him or herself. Dudley keeps the tale together as a psychopath willing to exploit the avarice of the film and publications industries while symbiotically, the film director and the magazine editor are willing to exploit Dudley as they do not want to know the truth. The shock to SECRET STORY is the seemingly mundane mutual exploitation of the lead characters that leads to a great behind the scenes thriller.

Harriet Klausner