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Cold Fear: New Tales of Terror
Cold New Tales of Terror
- GenresHorror
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1977
19 people want to read
About the author
David A. Sutton
96 books4 followersDavid A. Sutton is the recipient of the World Fantasy Award, The International Horror Guild Award and twelve British Fantasy Awards for editing magazines and anthologies (Fantasy Tales, Dark Voices: The Pan Book Of Horror and Dark Terrors: The Gollancz Book Of Horror). Other anthologies include New Writings In Horror & The Supernatural, The Satyr’s Head & Other Tales Of Terror, Phantoms Of Venice, Haunts Of Horror and Darker Terrors. He has also been a genre fiction writer since the 1960s with stories appearing widely in anthologies and magazines, including in Best New Horror, Final Shadows, The Mammoth Book Of Merlin, Beneath The Ground, Shadows Over Innsmouth, The Black Book Of Horror, Subtle Edens, The Ghosts & Scholars Book Of Shadows, Psychomania, Second City Scares, Kitchen Sink Gothic, Phantasmagoria, Gruesome Grotesques, The Ghosts & Scholars Book Of Shadows and The Ghosts & Scholars Book Of Folk Horror. His short stories are collected in CLINICALLY DEAD & OTHER TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL, DEAD WATER AND OTHER WEIRD TALES and EN VACANCES. He is also the proprietor of Shadow Publishing, a small press specialising in collections and anthologies.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 14, 2023
As one of the prime British horror anthologists of the 1970s (alongside Peter Haining and Michel Parry), Hugh Lamb's passion was for rediscovering and republishing lost Victorian ghost stories. Thus COLD FEAR is something of an anomaly, a collection of mostly contemporary, unpublished tales. The good thing about this is that I hadn't read a single one of them before, which is unusual for me.
Ramsey Campbell's stories bookend the anthology; IN THE BAG, about a guy literally haunted by a carrier bag, is typically good, but AFTER THE QUEEN is rather obtuse for my taste. Eleanor Inglefield's THE MUSIC IN THE HOUSE is a nice little Jamesian effort about a cursed archaeological find, while Brian Lumley's IN THE GLOW-ZONE is a rare and grim post-apocalypse yarn, a bit like THREADS.
THE PAPAL MAGICIAN sees Ken Alden exploring medieval Italian politics to middling effect, while Robert Aickman's LAURA is a typically understated and shuddersome ghost story. AN EMISSARY FOR THE DEVIL sees Robert Haining taking a look at Satanism while David Sutton's A LITTLE BIT OF EGYPT is a predictable mummy story. AUNTY GREEN is a rather obvious revenge story by John Blackburn.
ALL THE AMENITIES is by Kathleen Murray and rather predictable too, although I can forgive it that for the eerie setting. There's a big joke that requires some knowledge of Greek theatre, while Charles Birkin's DINNER IN A PRIVATE ROOM appears to be solely about wordplay. Adrien Cole's THE DEMON IN THE STONE is another favourite, a big action set-piece of a story, the climax particularly thrilling.
Frederick Cowles' THE HOUSE IN THE FOREST is both creepy and unexpectedly gruesome, an unpublished effort by the famous author. THE MAN WHO WOULDN'T EAT sees Arthur Porges answering the riddle of voodoo with some rather blunt science. Meanwhile, Rosemary Timperley's THE DARKHOUSE KEEPER is mostly a macabre story of revenge, but it turns into a rushed ghost story in the last few pages and features some fine imagery.
Ramsey Campbell's stories bookend the anthology; IN THE BAG, about a guy literally haunted by a carrier bag, is typically good, but AFTER THE QUEEN is rather obtuse for my taste. Eleanor Inglefield's THE MUSIC IN THE HOUSE is a nice little Jamesian effort about a cursed archaeological find, while Brian Lumley's IN THE GLOW-ZONE is a rare and grim post-apocalypse yarn, a bit like THREADS.
THE PAPAL MAGICIAN sees Ken Alden exploring medieval Italian politics to middling effect, while Robert Aickman's LAURA is a typically understated and shuddersome ghost story. AN EMISSARY FOR THE DEVIL sees Robert Haining taking a look at Satanism while David Sutton's A LITTLE BIT OF EGYPT is a predictable mummy story. AUNTY GREEN is a rather obvious revenge story by John Blackburn.
ALL THE AMENITIES is by Kathleen Murray and rather predictable too, although I can forgive it that for the eerie setting. There's a big joke that requires some knowledge of Greek theatre, while Charles Birkin's DINNER IN A PRIVATE ROOM appears to be solely about wordplay. Adrien Cole's THE DEMON IN THE STONE is another favourite, a big action set-piece of a story, the climax particularly thrilling.
Frederick Cowles' THE HOUSE IN THE FOREST is both creepy and unexpectedly gruesome, an unpublished effort by the famous author. THE MAN WHO WOULDN'T EAT sees Arthur Porges answering the riddle of voodoo with some rather blunt science. Meanwhile, Rosemary Timperley's THE DARKHOUSE KEEPER is mostly a macabre story of revenge, but it turns into a rushed ghost story in the last few pages and features some fine imagery.
Displaying 1 of 1 review