Luckily for me, this book is well up to his normal high standards. It's a nice quick read at 120 pages and pulls one of my favourite tricks in horror fiction. It's set in an easily identifiable real world, with characters who feel entirely real, and a supernatural element that may or may not be completely imaginary.
Since an ill fated holiday to the eponymous Albion Fay - a holiday cottage in the middle of nowhere, located next to some mysterious caves - Frank's family life has fallen apart. His twin sister changes after going missing, no longer the confident one, she's distracted and nervous. His parent's already fractious relationship has descended still further into physical violence.
The unsuccessful holiday happened when he was 10, but the aftereffects are with him decades later. The story starts at a family funeral nearly 40 years later and flashes back to several different timeframes, steadily filling in as many gaps in the narrative as are necessary.
The gradual reveals are handled masterfully and he builds a steadily increasing atmosphere of dread. The style of writing is evocative of Graham Joyce and Ramsey Campbell at their best. There are genuine emotional shocks on display and undercurrents of deeper and nastier horrors.
This is the horror of the half glimpsed shape and implied mopnsters, combined with some monstrous behaviour from the very human protagonists. By the time we reach the first flashback, we know Frank quite intimately, and this reader at least, wants to know what made him the way he is.
Like The Brain from beyond, this book is also written in the present tense. But this is present tense in the hands of a writer who knows how to use it for full impact. there is a sense of immediacy to the story that helps drag the reader through to the closing pages and the shocks contained therein.
This is available online, through the Snowbooks website
https://www.snowbooks.com/books/albion-fay/
I highly recommend you treat yourself.
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