![]() ![]() Alison’s sister Hermione is horrified when she learns that Queenie was buried with a locket containing a lock of Rowan’s hair, and she wants to exhume the body and reclaim the locket. ![]() The relief that Rowan’s mother Alison feels, however, quickly turns to discomfort. Queenie, the matriarch of the family, had been cruel and abusive to her daughters, and had set her attention upon her 11-year-old granddaughter Rowan just before her death. When Queenie passes away of old age, the Faraday family involuntarily breathes a sigh of relief. Though not all of his novels follow quite the same pattern, The Influence is a perfect example of this style, and a great tale of slowly encroaching horror. ![]() ![]() His stories are about the thing that moves out of the corner of your eye, that figure you think you see outside your window that may have just been a tree after all, that feeling you have when you’re sure you closed the basement door, but it is somehow open nevertheless. If you’re unfamiliar with Campbell’s work, he is a master of establishing an atmosphere of creeping dread. At the end of 2019, Flame Tree Press released a new edition of one of Campbell’s classic novels from 1988, The Influence. I’ve been trying to get together enough focus to start reading fiction regularly again, and there was no better way to spark that interest and begin 2020 than by reading one of my favorite authors of all time, Ramsey Campbell. ![]()
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