If you grew up in the 1970's, you'll remember The Pan Book of Horror - a seemingly endless collection of short stories, several volumes of which could be found leering from the shelves of every bookshop - indeed, anywhere that sold even a handful of books - alongside Dennis Wheatley reprints, NEL's youth cult pulps and assorted other slices of low rent and high entertainment. The books were sneered at by genre critics and horror fiction's self-proclaimed elite, but the highly readable short stories, packed with graphic violence, were lapped up by less discerning readers - like myself.

Then, seemingly overnight, they were gone, victims of falling sales and booksellers no longer wanting such tat on their increasingly full shelves.

I'm clearly not the only person to regret the demise of these books, as Mortbury Press' Black Book of Horror series deliberately sets out to recapture those grisly glories, complete with a back cover that singles out the most gruesome moments from several stories and offer up a variety of horrors to the eager reader ("MONSTERS... CREATURES... REVENANTS... MANIACS"). And the stories within also have a Pan Horror feel - grisly, nasty and often with a distinct EC comics sense of humour.

Gary Power's Flitching's Revenge is a tale of gypsy curses, complete with Omen-style deaths, while Claude Lalumiere's Ted's Collection is a dark tale of body parts and amputee fetishism; David Williamson's Rest in Pieces offers up a tale of murder and dismemberment that would fit nicely into and Amicus film, and It Begins at Home by John Llewelyn Probert is a grim look at just how far advertisers will go to get your attention.

Bernard Bought the Farm by James Stanger is this volume's bad taste spectacular - the story of a pig farm owner who enjoys torture and bestiality, it'll never win any awards for subtlety, but delivers its grubby thrills with aplomb nonetheless. Paul Finch's The Green Bath is less grisly, but makes up for it with copious levels of sex.

It's not all in-your-face stuff though - stories like Thana Niveau's The Pier, Reggie Oliver's Minos or Rhadamanthus, Joel Lane's Morning Echo and Tony Richards' The In-Betweeners are more restrained, though no less effective, while Craig Herbertson's New Teacher and Stephen Volk's Swell Head add a touch of twisted humour.

All in all then, a very satisfying collection of sex, violence, ghosts and gore. The Black Books of Horror might not win the approval of horror fiction's self-important cliques, but I'm looking forward to the next one already.

DAVID FLINT

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