Fear Across the Mersey XVIII: Watch the Birdie | review by Rafe McGregor

Fear Across the Mersey by Ramsey Campbell

PS Publishing, hardback, £25.00, August 2024, ISBN 9781803943701

This story is narrated by Campbell himself rather than an author surrogate or alter ego and begins and ends with what one might call an explicit authorial intrusion, two short passages in italics which, taken together, suggest that it is nonfiction rather than fiction. The narrative is set entirely in The Baltic Fleet, a popular pub and Victorian tourist attraction on the dockside and concerns the landlord, his parrot, and a foreign language curse scrawled on the wall in the toilets. I must admit to being confused by Campbell’s repeated use of ‘Slavonic’ instead of ‘Slavic’ to describe that language and wondered if it was a typo or an error. The former is, apparently, simply an older term for the latter, but its presence interfered with my suspension of disbelief, as anomalies often do. A laconic and lively yarn, though I’m not sure what the bookends added to it.