'Look into my eyes...if you don't, I'll cut you up.
If you're lucky I may strangle you with my beautiful silk tie. You like it? Yours for a tenner. That's IF I don't kill you first.
Which I might do...who knows?'

Sometimes an author comes along who should have been born in another century. John L Probert's such a man. In a world of mobile phones, laptops and knife wielding hoodies, this velvet jacketed scribbler should be ensconsed in the foggy swirls of Victorian England; lit by candlelight...in a box room at the back of a brothel ...for lovers of the deformed lady.

His first book for Gray Friar Press, Faculty of Terror, was a much celebrated tome and I have been assured by all that it's very good indeed and is certain to make me laugh in several places. This new book entwines five macabre tales - the story of The Reverend Patrick Clement's arrival at Chilminster Cathedral providing the anchor. To be honest with you, were I the reverend, I would have caught the next bus out once I'd met the whiskered lady at the little cathedral shop. Fortunately for us, though not for him, he stays - to his ultimate detriment.

The thing about John L Probert's writing is the sense you get that he's had an absolute ball writing it. You can tell. The stand out story, A Dance to the Music of Insanity, is so utterly bonkers and gore-drenched that it immediately invokes the twistedly brilliant writings of Harry E Turner, he of The Pan Book of Horror Stories infamy. John goes one better, as his tales are grounded with a profound sense of realism, even when things are going to hell in a handcart and are decidedly unreal.

The first time that I read the book the whole way through, I was narked at the ending. It seemed a bit tame after everything that had gone before it. On second reading, I came to realise that my bad mood at the time had spoiled it. It comes to quite a poignant full stop, and I even felt a little sorry for The Reverend Clements. 

If I was to pick a single bug-bear, it would be the look of the cover. It just doesn't befit the stories nestling within. Even in this climate, when times are tight, care should be taken in choosing as eye-catching a cover as possible. If I were a lazy browser, mooching around a shop, selecting by cover alone, I would have passed this one and been on to the next. But kudos to Gray Friar Press for getting it out. Times are hard and life for the small presses must be harder still.

It's a great collection and could possibly become a legendary one.

8.5 out of 10

PUBLICATION DATE: February 2008
 

Trade paperback; ISBN: 978-1-906331-06-1