Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #107321 in Books
• Published on: 2007-12-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Dazed & Confused
`Pithy morality fables'

Guardian
'Short, sharp shockers: gothic fantasies played out with noughties accessories... these are imaginative, bleak, cautionary tales, which shed their little pools of perverse candlelight on both new and familiar places'

Time Out
'Laced with unease... reads like a series of Goya aquatints exploring the nastier extremes of human behaviour'

Customer Reviews

A disappointment
I've been a Fowler fan since his first novel, "Roofworld", first appeared in paperback, but this collection was a huge disappointment for me. Only a couple of stories resonated with me - particularly "All Packed", which was simply stunning - and for some reason I found myself struggling to get the urge to pick this one up to read it. Maybe it was just me, but the collection seemed to be missing that certain something to make it special, and that was definitely present in his others such as "Personal Demons", "The Bureau of Lost Souls" and "City Jitters". There was a time when I preferred Fowler's short stories to his novels, but now I think my opinion has switched. A disappointment.

Welcome back!
Old Devil Moon is Christopher Fowler's first short story collection in nearly five years. The wait has been a long one but was it worth it? The answer is a resounding YES. The short story is a difficult thing to pull off but when it is done right it can send a shiver down the spine that the longer forms of prose just can't. The Old Devil Moon is a definite spine tingler. From the achingly atmospheric and melancholic "The Twilight Express" through the laugh-a-long barmyness of "The Night Museum" to the shuderingly intimate "All Packed" The Old Devil Moon delivers time after time and delivers in ways and forms that will keep you guessing, not only right to the very end of each story, but also where the next perfectly formed piece will take you. But be warned! This is an eclectic collection that will have your emotions on a rollercoaster. So if you want a safe ride down the middle lane of the fictional highway then this is not for you. However, if you fancy a horse whipped coach ride on the foggy cliff edge of a rampant imagination then you can not do better than Old Devil Moon.

Dark, suspenseful, and finally here!
As the author's website promises a signed copy to the first person who reviews the book on Amazon, I thought it would be nice to be the first person to review the book who has actually read it (ie the first to review it after the publication date), rather than before. And I thought it would be nice, in this vein, to say something about the book itself!

Christopher Fowler has been writing for about twenty years, and seems to always suffer from book shops not knowing where to place his novels and collections of short stories. Are they crime, or horror? This short story collection, his tenth, belongs most firmly in the latter category.

The author, in his preface, questions the need for a book about a dark and strange world, and quotes a large number of real life dark and strange stories to prove the point - many of which, if they were fiction, would sound laughable. However, the stories themselves make one glad that Mr Fowler bothered. From his own backyard of Kings Cross in 'Exclusion Zone', to Africa and the Middle East in 'The Threads' and 'Cupped Hands', Fowler tells genuinely unnerving tales of the world that lies just beneath the facade that most of us see on a daily basis. Classical Fowler themes are revisited, including, on several occasions, the horrific effects when westerners try to take advantage of what they perceive as being less civilised cultures, always with results that are unsettling and disturbing.

Fowler's work makes one look at the world in a slightly different way, and the closest analogy that I can draw is to compare his short stories to those found in Clive Barker's Books of Blood. Whilst Barker has gone onto worldwide fame and fortune, this seems somehow to have eluded Fowler to some degree, despite the success of the Bryant & May crime novels. This is truly an injustice, and any fans of crime, horror or any other genre should give him a go. Beneath the book's slightly cheap looking cover are 20 or so gems which are asking to be read, and read again - it will be worth your time if you do so.