Fear Across the Mersey XXI: The Rounds | review by Rafe McGregor

Fear Across the Mersey by Ramsey Campbell

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

This story is narrated in the first person and present tense – a difficult combination to do well and achieved with admirable ease by Campbell (few authors can sustain the present tense for long without it becoming either jarring or distracting). It is also set entirely on Merseyrail’s inner loop (for want of a better term) and begins with a compelling hook: the narrator sees a woman leave her briefcase on the train, picks it up, and hurries to return it to her. But the woman is a practising Muslim and this is 2010 so perhaps he should be more careful…or perhaps Campbell is playing with the implicit (and explicit) biases and prejudices of his readers…which he seems to be doing when she receives the briefcase with gratitude. But then she leaves it on the next train. A real cracker of a narrative that never lets either the pace or the suspense flag.