The Mammoth Book of Zombies Book

After ploughing through the Stephen Jones-edited mammoth collections on vampires, werewolves and terror, I found myself sitting down with yet another hefty paperback – The Mammoth Book of Zombies. Here were 26 stories specifically tackling the undead, some written in the 19th century and others bang up to date. I was expecting some repetition in the stories – after all, zombies are a pretty limited menace – but I ended up pleasantly surprised by the sheer breadth and variety of work contained in this one.

Clive Barker kicks things off again with SEX, DEATH AND STARSHINE, a perverse and satirical outing in which a theatre is overrun by actors who are a little too laid-back in their roles...if you get my meaning. Ramsey Campbell follows it up with RISING GENERATION, in which a school visit to some ancient caves goes awry. I found this slightly overwritten and not as flowing as some of the author’s other work, and hence didn’t enjoy it as much.

THE SONG OF THE SLAVES, by Manly Wade Wellman, is by contrast quite brilliant. A dastardly slave-owner, forced to drown his slaves by throwing them overboard, finds himself haunted in this extremely macabre and atmospheric piece of writing that has a sense of unease like nothing else. Seriously, this is up there as one of the best horror stories I’ve ever read, cementing the author’s reputation in my mind as one of the most underrated of all time.

R. Chetwynd-Hayes works wonders with THE GHOULS, a gleeful outing in which zombies have infiltrated government. This could only have been written in the ‘70s, and it’s a nice time capsule for the era. After this we get THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR, Poe’s familiar outing in which a man on the verge of death allows himself to be put in a trance by a mesmerist – with horrifying results. I love this grisly tale and especially its adaptation (with Vincent Price) in the Corman film TALES OF TERROR.

Karl Edward Wagner’s STICKS is a modern classic and one much-anthologised. It’s about something lurking in a ruined farmhouse and has the same kind of sinister foreboding as in THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, as well as the weird stick-man effigies (I’m sure the guys who wrote WITCH read this beforehand). Another all-time favourite.

QUIETLY NOW is Charles L. Grant’s take on the genre. A writer suspects there’s a vampire lurking in the basement of the local school, and I thoroughly enjoyed the thrills that follow. I normally don’t like Grant’s obtuse, abstract style, but this is something else entirely: spooky and surprising with great character building. It’s his best work yet, for me.

Basil Copper’s THE GREY HOUSE is familiar stuff – a young married couple buy a dilapidated house in France without knowing its reputation. It’s lengthy and something in Copper’s style makes it gripping, ghastly without ever resorting to gruesomeness. I loved it – but not as much as the M. R. James classic, A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS, which is even better! Absolutely unnerving, this rural classic sees an amateur treasure hunter digging up one of the three crowns of East Anglia and finding himself pursued by a vengeful spirit. This takes place in local surroundings I’m familiar with, and it scared the hell out of me!

THE CRUCIAN PIT, by Nicholas Royle, is a straightforward mystery with horrific undertones and a good twist ending. Brian Lumley gives us a black comedy in THE DISAPPROVAL OF JEREMY CLEAVE, full of outrageous events and a huge streak of imagination. That’s followed up with Lovecraft’s HERBERT WEST – REANIMATOR, an atypical, anecdotal (originally published as a series of short-short stories) outing in which a young medical student sets about reanimating the dead. Not for the faint-hearted, this modern-day FRANKENSTEIN story is slightly repetitive due to its structure, but frightening as hell – and the film adaptation wasn’t half bad, either.

Lisa Tuttle once again tackles sinister British history in TREADING THE MAZE, following the old tradition of ‘turf mazes’. This is a mood piece full of regret and nostalgia, and a nice change from the pulp perils of the preceding stories. Following this is David Riley’s OUT OF CORRUPTION – a set-piece smasher and a wonderful pulp adventure! It’s tense and sinister, with the early slow passages leading to a denouement packed with all out terror. It might be heavily influenced by NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, but that doesn’t stop it from being one of the most entertaining tales in this collection.

Graham Masterton tackles the taboo topic of child abduction in THE TAKING OF MR BILL, which is upsetting and one of the most adult things the author has written – none of his ghoul-house gore here, just compelling characterisation and disturbing scenes. J. Sheridan Le Fanu delivers SCHALKEN THE PAINTER, a creepy Victorian classic ably mixing the gothic and the mystery genres.

David Sutton’s CLINICALLY DEAD tells of a hospital overrun by the undead. I thought it crossed the threshold of taste and was too repulsively repugnant to enjoy. Les Daniels contributes THEY’RE COMING FOR YOU, a sexually charged comic outing about a cuckolded husband getting his just desserts. Hugh B. Cave’s MISSION TO MARGAL delivers some classic voodoo pulp but isn’t quite as frightening or well-composed as some of the author’s other pulp classics.

LATER is Michael Marshall Smith’s take on the zombie, and another atypical one: the themes are love and nostalgia and the writing is expertly crafted. I even found it moving – not something I’d expect to find in a collection like this! Peter Tremayne once again delivers a Celtic spin on things in MARBH BHEO, a sterling and traditional effort that never disappoints, always remaining literate and intelligent. By comparison, Dennis Etchison’s THE BLOOD KISS is a bit lacklustre, some of it going over my head entirely.

Christopher Fowler’s NIGHT AFTER NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD is a homage to the George Romero classic and fans of that film will be delighted by the twists he adds here. Following that we get a novella from Robert Bloch entitled THE DEAD DON’T DIE! In which a prison officer is astonished when an executed man returns from the dead. It leads into a witty and fast-moving pulp adventure laced with the author’s trademark black humour and one which I thoroughly enjoyed. Where else will you find a hardboiled detective mixed with an ancient sorcerer and a zombie invasion of Earth? Kim Newman’s PATRICIA’S PROFESSION is an unwieldy futuristic effort that didn’t gel with me like most of the author’s work and in fact I found it a bit of a bore.

The last story, by Joe R. Lansdale, has a great title – ON THE FAR SIDE OF THE CADILLAC DESERT WITH DEAD FOLKS. The writing matches it: this is a bleak post-apocalypse story, complete with an undercurrent of bubbling sexual perversion and a grubby tone. Despite this, the would-be heroes are compelling and the atypical storytelling had me hooked. It’s definitely worth a shot.