Horror Books > F Horror Books

Advantages: Nice to see Bryant and May again
Disadvantages: Not an absorbing mysetery

...of having to pay the full £6.99 cover price is very rare. The Amazon Marketplace has copies from £1.40, which I would recommend for the fan, but only one who wants to be able to claim they have all Fowler’s work. For anyone who has never read his books, I’d thoroughly recommend Fowler, but not this one. ... Read review

Advantages: Fowler works to his strengths for the first time in a Bryant and May mystery
Disadvantages: A few references to previous novels that will be lost on the first time reader

...Detectives Bryant and May of the Metropolitan Police's Peculiar Crimes Unit, I was initially quite excited. A couple of books later, however, I was less enthusiastic. "Full Dark House", the first of these books, was not amongst Fowler's better works and the second, "Seventy Seven Clocks" was merely a slightly edited version of his earlier novel "Darkest Day", which had also not counted among my favourites. So it was that I approached "The Water ...
...off enough not to buy the book, but I was a little worried about what I may find within. The PCU is recovering from the events of "Full Dark House" when Bryant is approached by an old friend, Benjamin Singh, who has recently discovered the dead body of his sister Ruth. Ruth apparently drowned whilst sitting upright in her own kitchen, fully clothed. This is the kind of conundrum that Bryant loves and he agrees to help his old friend. Meanwhile, ... Read review

Advantages: Great fun to read
Disadvantages: Not great value and not terribly original

When my last Amazon order turned up, I couldn’t help but be a little disappointed by the contents. Sure, it was everything I’d ordered, including two recent books by one of my favourite authors, Christopher Fowler. One of these was the cause of my disappointment. Not for the contents, but for the size. For £7.99, I expected something a little more than a slim volume containing fewer pages, albeit bigger ones, than the instruction manual for my PDA. ...
...but I was expecting a novel length novel, rather than something that looks like a short story on its own. You’ve heard the old phrase about not judging a book by its cover, right? Well, I did. At the very least, I was judging a book by the size of the gap between the covers. More fool me. It’s Ben Harper’s first day as the Health and Safety Officer at SymaxCorp. His predecessor left his job suddenly about three weeks previously although the evidence ... Read review

Advantages: Some original touches if you've not read the first version
Disadvantages: It's not a new book, just a new version

One of the bonuses of submitting reviews to a site like this is that if it's not very good or if you think of a way it can be improved later, you can simply edit it and have another go. But the same can't be true for a published author and their works. Once they're out there, there isn't a great deal you can do about it. Well, actually, that's not entirely true. Stephen King released two versions of "The Stand", after his publishers demanded more ...
...to keep the price down and this was put back in for the second release. Dean Koontz has done the same, rewriting his 1973 novel "Demon Seed" for republication in 1997. Now Christopher Fowler has released "Seventy-Seven Clocks", which is not in fact a new novel, but a rewritten version of one of his earlier works, "Darkest Day", a novel the author himself claimed not to be entirely satisfied with. The Whitstables are an old London family, fallen ... Read review

Advantages: wildy creative
Disadvantages: very intense

a very dark and twisted book not for the faint hearted. a gripping tale that can wisk you off your feet into your world of imagination. When you start reading the story you will find that manolito is actually dead hes on the astral plane but he isnt completely dead because before he died he met his soul mate and she doesnt no it but she is keeping him tied to the world and her. so he's stuck between the two places chases his soul mate trying to ... Read review