Customer Reviews

Wicked Delights

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Readers of John Llewellyn Probert (those who are yet to encounter his work are strongly recommended towards his earlier writings, namely: The Faculty of Terror, The Catacombs of Fear, Against The Darkness) know that his fiction is of a unique variety. It has an adequate quantity of horror (worldly or supernatural) mixed with judicious amounts of humour & cruelty (for ready reference: consult the stories in the Pan Book of Horror series), served with a flourish & liveliness that we never expect in horror stories. This book is quintessential Probert, as his style is displayed in the 18 stories with abundance, leaving you gasping for breath, since you had been suspending that process because you were unable to decide whether to laugh or to cry or to grimace. The contents are: -

(*) Introduction

1. At Midnight, I Will Steal Your Soul: what happens when a perpetually scared person decides to face the ultimate horror?
2. Special Offer: viewing the world of tele-shopping in an imaginary light, but what if it gets 'real'?
3. Daughter of the City: a haunting story, that began like Simon Kurt Unsworth's famous "The Church on the Island", but ended in a very-very different note.
4. The Iconostasis of Imperfections: a classic (Lovecraftian?) horror story, located in Siberia(!!).
5. Ophelia: this story could have regally marched into the very best of Pan Book of Horror, with its unspoken & unfair cruelty and hapless protagonist.
6. Size Matters: superb mixture of humour, grotesque, and 'gross', told with panache.
7. Recipe for Disaster: a superb piece of "a book gone wrong", composed for inclusion in "Bound for Evil" anthology.
8. Best Man's Speech: a poignant ghost story, with a twist that was truly unusual.
9. The Mirror of Tears: another poignant ghost story, revisiting a long-held belief and legend.
10. The Comeback Kid: in my humble opinion, this is one of the funniest pieces that I have read in recent times, one that the reader is bound to enjoy irrespective of the state of mind at the time of reading.
11. Last Christmas: another proper, no-frills, horror story.
12. In Sickness and...: what happens if a person with responsibility & power becomes criminally insane?
13. Two for Dinner: a tribute to all the stories (and different styles of sadistic 'pleasure') described in the Pan Book of Horror series, and one fully worthy of getting included in the same series.
14. De Vermis Infestis: worms that devour intelligent literature (NOT those created by Dan Brown), and intelligence!
15. The Dispossessed: what happens when we start losing the cover for hiding all that nastiness below?
16. Your Help Needed Urgently!: charity, with a shocking difference!
17. The Volkendorf Exhibition: does art imitate life, or IS IT life?
18. Some Must Suffer: a tribute to the 1970-s British Horror Cinema.

(*) An Afterword: candid sharing of the genesis of the stories.

Overall, a solid collection of 'Probertian' stories which should be compulsory reading for lovers of horror, who like their stories to have a contemporary setting, and yet, told with a minimum of 'f-words' and maximum of atmosphere-building sharp sentences.