The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Horror Book

This was a one-stop attempt by me to see how recent horror writing compares with the fantastic Pan Book of Horror Stories series I was a fan of when I was a vile teenager. The Pan Books were total gonzo. I would like to review all of them but I fear everyone would defriend me.

Okay, the experience was not good. Two examples :

No Sharks in the Med. by Brian Lumley

This first story did indeed fill me with a deep sense of dread and unease, along the lines of What Have I Volunteered Myself For? - since this story is an unbelievably stupid string of cliches - check it out - the honeymooners find themselves trapped on an isolated Greek beach by a local guy called Spiro :

"Geoff, we're in trouble," Gwen said as soon as Spiros had left. "We're in serious trouble."
"I know it," he said. "I think I've known it ever since we got here. That bloke's as sinister as they come."



The Man who Drew Cats. by Michael Marshall Smith

No no nooo. This kind of dingle-dangly ookums was corny in the 1930s. I'll spoil it for you - a (tall mysterious) stranger comes to (a perfect quaint rural American) town. He can draw and paint real well. A woman in the town and her young son are getting regularly battered by her drunk of a husband. The tall stranger draws a tiger which gets the bad guy. How supernatural is that? Plenty, I'd say.

Turns out this version of modern horror is mostly supernatural. Which is why I'm outta here. I mean, what are we, twelve? The beauty (I should say ugliness) of the Pan Books of Horror Stories was that they were SECULAR. (Mostly). They didn't believe in anything except cruelty.

Okay, modern horror, this is goodbye from P Bryant.