Fear Across the Mersey V: The Height of the Scream | review by Rafe McGregor

Fear Across the Mersey by Ramsey Campbell

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

I found this tale difficult to follow, in consequence of swift changes of location accompanied by minimal description, and wasn’t sure if the supernatural was involved or not. The juxtaposed episodes themselves – a hip house party where the hosts attack one another, the scene of a violent suicide, a confrontation with a mutilated war veteran on a bus, the anonymous narrator’s argument with his best friend, and another death – are carefully and innovatively curated, revisiting ‘The Whining’s’ treatment of our great capacities for inhumanity and indifference. I nonetheless felt that I was intended to have a better grasp of whether or not the inhumanity and indifference was merely quotidian or something altogether more spectacular and that the failure wasn’t entirely my own fault. Campbell’s touch is just a little too light here and it’s one of the few short stories I’ve ever read that would have benefitted from more exposition.