Fear Across the Mersey IV: The Whining | review by Rafe McGregor

Fear Across the Mersey by Ramsey Campbell

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

The title of this tale made me chuckle, bringing to mind various colleagues in various workplaces over the years, and I wondered if there would some humour in it. Definitely not: this is the most harrowing so far, a brutally realistic narrative concerning a starving stray dog on the superficial level and staging our capacity for inhumanity to other people and other species at the thematic level. I’ve already mentioned that Campbell has a knack for portraying compelling characters who are unsympathetic, which is evinced again here. On the basis of reading only four of the stories, he also has a knack for setting up the reader’s expectations for narrative resolution and then subverting those expectations. One might say the same of many authors, but Campbell’s subversions are so subtle that he configures an experience which is simultaneously anticipated and astonishing. Clearly the hand of a master of the craft.