What do you think?
Rate this book
The Last Voice They Hear
A voice from the past interrupts Geoff's happy life as his long-lost brother Ben challenges Geoff to solve the murders of young couples occurring in the area, murders that Ben himself may have committed. Reprint.
384 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1998
4 people are currently reading
158 people want to read
About the author
Ramsey Campbell
858 books1,594 followersRamsey Campbell is a British writer considered by a number of critics to be one of the great masters of horror fiction. T. E. D. Klein has written that "Campbell reigns supreme in the field today," while S. T. Joshi has said that "future generations will regard him as the leading horror writer of our generation, every bit the equal of Lovecraft or Blackwood."
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 17, 2011
If I were the type to stop reading books, I would have stopped this with this one. Books I want to read are many, and life is short.
An unthrilling thriller with hard-to-follow prose. Don't waste your time.
An unthrilling thriller with hard-to-follow prose. Don't waste your time.
April 3, 2011
Geoff is happily married with a young son who is the delight of his life. A famous, successful investigative journalist, he is in the middle of a publicity tour when a voice on the phone plunges him into the darkest part of his past, and into a deadly present.
The voice is that of Geoff's long-missing brother, Ben. When they were children, Ben was blamed for every trouble, large or small. And Ben was not always innocent--he performed acts of vandalism; he stole; sometimes he seemed, even as a child, to be a borderline sociopath. He was also abused, emotionally and physically, by their father. Without that abuse, what might Ben have become? With it, was has he become?
When they were small, Ben devised tortured puzzles for his brother to solve. Now Ben offers Geoff a new set of clues with a terrible secret at their core. Someone is killing happily married couples. Ben challenges Geoff to solve the murders...and warns him that his own family may be in danger if he does not. If Geoff fails, his son may pay the price--but if he succeeds, will he find that is brother has become a killer? (cover blurb)
I hadn't read Ramsey Campbell in years, and looked forward to trying his stuff in this genre rather than the formulaic horror -- a la John Saul -- that he used to write. (THE DOLL WHO ATE HIS MOTHER, I mean really!)
I wanted to like this story. There's a really good novel in here somewhere. Unfortunately, Campbell didn't write it. Oh, every now and then he put together a few decent paragraphs. And the premise is intriguing which gave me enough hope to continue through about page 130. But the author's writing style grates, and his sentence structure often seems odd. When I got to the beginning of a chapter in which the first sentence mentioned a character I couldn't remember a thing about, it was time to give up. And swear off Ramsey Campbell once again.
The voice is that of Geoff's long-missing brother, Ben. When they were children, Ben was blamed for every trouble, large or small. And Ben was not always innocent--he performed acts of vandalism; he stole; sometimes he seemed, even as a child, to be a borderline sociopath. He was also abused, emotionally and physically, by their father. Without that abuse, what might Ben have become? With it, was has he become?
When they were small, Ben devised tortured puzzles for his brother to solve. Now Ben offers Geoff a new set of clues with a terrible secret at their core. Someone is killing happily married couples. Ben challenges Geoff to solve the murders...and warns him that his own family may be in danger if he does not. If Geoff fails, his son may pay the price--but if he succeeds, will he find that is brother has become a killer? (cover blurb)
I hadn't read Ramsey Campbell in years, and looked forward to trying his stuff in this genre rather than the formulaic horror -- a la John Saul -- that he used to write. (THE DOLL WHO ATE HIS MOTHER, I mean really!)
I wanted to like this story. There's a really good novel in here somewhere. Unfortunately, Campbell didn't write it. Oh, every now and then he put together a few decent paragraphs. And the premise is intriguing which gave me enough hope to continue through about page 130. But the author's writing style grates, and his sentence structure often seems odd. When I got to the beginning of a chapter in which the first sentence mentioned a character I couldn't remember a thing about, it was time to give up. And swear off Ramsey Campbell once again.
August 9, 2017
It's strange how one book can elicit such widely differing opinions. For me, The Last Voice They Hear has now become one of my favourite vintage Campbells. This is not the stuff of splattergore. The true horror is in the individuals themselves - one in particular. The author's knack in racking up tension through the gradual unfolding of a complex and sinister personality is demonstrated admirably here. It all rang so true. The cavernous differences in the lives of two half-brothers is deftly played out, and the ongoing murder enquiry, with one brother challenging the other to solve it, is chilling and relentless. For me, this was a book I didn't want to put down. So I didn't. I read many chapters at a time and lost myself in the story. Ramsey Campbell proved to me once again that he is the master of characterisation.
October 20, 2022
One of Campbell's forays into non-supernatural psychological horror. He can turn out good work in this vein - The Face That Must Die was a classic - but in this case the novel is let down by some aspects which come across as more risible than shocking and the overall weakness of the modern-day sections compared to the flashback chapters in which we explore the abusive home life of the protagonist and his brother. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/202...
February 13, 2022
I struggled to finish this novel and only did so through sheer determination. Next time I start a book as boring as this one, however, it's going down at once. Life's too short to read bad books.
February 26, 2014
Pretty boring book overall.
Some good moments, but the main character Geoff is a spineless twat.
Much of the book details how a warped upbringing damages the growth into adulthood, both of Geoff and his "bad guy" brother Ben. In Geoff's case it made him a deceitful person who keeps a lot of secrets buried (he never told his wife that he had a brother, and even after he finds out his brother is killing people, he keeps it secret instead of going to the police). I found his secretive, devious personality quite irritating, and kept thinking "snap the f--k out of it".
The book might have been ok if it was shorter - I could not take it any more after getting about 3/4 way through and starting skipping through to see how it ended.
Some good moments, but the main character Geoff is a spineless twat.
Much of the book details how a warped upbringing damages the growth into adulthood, both of Geoff and his "bad guy" brother Ben. In Geoff's case it made him a deceitful person who keeps a lot of secrets buried (he never told his wife that he had a brother, and even after he finds out his brother is killing people, he keeps it secret instead of going to the police). I found his secretive, devious personality quite irritating, and kept thinking "snap the f--k out of it".
The book might have been ok if it was shorter - I could not take it any more after getting about 3/4 way through and starting skipping through to see how it ended.
February 2, 2012
Starts off slowly - very slowly - and is a tad confusing, I have to say. Halfway through I was musing on whether to continue, but I'm glad I persevered; the final sections are very good, and contain some truly horrific moments without resorting to gore, as you'd expect from a master of understatement. If you gave up before, you might want to skim-read for a little further, and see where it takes you.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews