Thieving Fear

PRAISE FOR RAMSEY CAMPBELL

'Britain's most respected living horror writer' Oxford Companion to English Literature

'Easily the best horror writer working in Britain today' Time Out

'Campbell is literate in a field which has attracted too many comic-book intellects, cool in a field where too many writers – myself included – tend toward panting melodrama . . . Good horror writers are quite rare, and Campbell is better than just good' Stephen King

'Britain's greatest living horror writer' Alan Moore

'Britain's leading horror writer . . . His novels have been getting better and better' City Limits

'One of Britain's most accomplished horror writers' Oxford Star

'The John le Carré of horror fiction' Bookshelf, Radio 4

'One of the best real horror writers at work today' Interzone

'The greatest living exponent of the British weird fiction tradition' The Penguin Encyclopaedia of Horror and the Supernatural

'Ramsey Campbell has succeeded more brilliantly than any other writer in bringing the supernatural tale up to date without sacrificing the literary standards that early masters made an indelible part of the tradition' Jack Sullivan (editor of the Penguin encyclopaedia)

'England's contemporary king of the horror genre' Atlanta Constitution

'One of the few real writers in our field . . . In some ways Ramsey Campbell is the best of us all' Peter Straub

'Ramsey Campbell has a talent for terror – he knows how to give you nightmares while you're still awake . . . Only a few writers can lay claim to such a level of consummate craftsmanship' Robert Bloch

'Campbell writes the most terrifying horror tales of anyone now alive' Twilight Zone Magazine

'He is unsurpassed in the subtle manipulation of mood . . . You forget you're just reading a story' Publishers Weekly

'One of the world's finest exponents of the classic British ghost story' Sounds

'For sheer ability to compose disturbing, evocative prose, he is unmatched in the horror/fantasy field . . . He turns the traditional horror novel inside out, and makes it work brilliantly' Fangoria

'Campbell has solidly established himself to be the best writer working in this field today' Karl Edward Wagner, The Year's Best Horror Stories

'When Mr Campbell pits his fallible, most human characters against enormous forces bent on incomprehensible errands the results are, as you might expect, often frightening, and, as you might not expect, often touching; even heartwarming' Gahan Wilson in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

'Britain's leading horror novelist' New Statesman

'Ramsey Campbell is Britain's finest living writer of horror stories: considerable praise for a man whose country boasts the talents of Clive Barker and Roald Dahl, M. John Harrison and Nigel Kneale' Douglas Winter, editor of Prime Evil

'Campbell writes the most disturbing horror fiction around' Today

'Ramsey Campbell is better than all the rest of us put together' Dennis Etchison

'Ramsey Campbell is the best horror writer alive, period' Thomas Tessier

'A horror writer in the classic mould . . . Britain's premier contemporary exponent of the art of scaring you out of your skin' Q Magazine

'The undisputed master of the psychological horror novel' Robert Holdstock

Perhaps the most important living writer in the horror fiction field' David Hartwell

'Ramsey Campbell's work is tremendous' Jonathan Ross

'Campbell is a rightful tenant of M. R. James country, the genuine badlands of the human psyche' Norman Shrapnel in the Guardian

'One of the world's finest exponents of the classic British ghost story . . . His writing explores the potential for fear in the mundane, the barely heard footsteps, the shadow flitting past at the edge of one's sight' Daily Telegraph

'The Grand Master of British horror . . . the greatest living writer of horror fiction' Vector

'Britain's greatest horror writer . . . Realistic, subtle and arcane' Waterstone's Guide to Books

'In Campbell's hands words take on a life of their own, creating images that stay with you, feelings that prey on you, and people you hope never ever to meet' Starburst

'The finest writer now working in the horror field' Interzone

'Ramsey Campbell is the nearest thing we have to an heir to M. R. James' The Times

'Easily the finest practising British horror novelist and the one whose work can most wholeheartedly be recommended to those who dislike the genre . . . His misclassification as a genre writer obscures his status as the finest magic realist Britain possesses this side of J. G. Ballard' Daily Telegraph

'One of the few who can scare and disturb as well as make me laugh out loud. His humour is very black but very funny, and that's a rare gift to have' Mark Morris in the Observer

'The most sophisticated and highly regarded of British horror writers' Financial Times

'He writes of our deepest fears in a precise, clear prose that somehow manages to be beautiful and terrifying at the same time. He is a powerful, original writer, and you owe it to yourself to make his acquaintance' Washington Post

'I would say that only five writers have written serious novels which incorporate themes of fantasy or the inexplicable and still qualify as literature: T. E. D. Klein, Peter Straub, Richard Adams, Jonathan Carroll and Ramsey Campbell' Stephen King

'Ramsey Campbell is the best of us all' Poppy Z. Brite

'The foremost stylist and innovator in British horror fiction' The Scream Factory

'One of the century's great literary exponents of the gothic and horrific' Guardian

'A national treasure . . . one of the most revered and significant authors in our field' Peter Atkins

'No other horror writer currently active is engaging with the real world quite as rigorously as Ramsey Campbell' Kim Newman

'Ramsey Campbell taught me how to write . . . There's an intensity and clarity to his worldview that's quite beautiful' Jeremy Dyson

'When it comes to the box of nightmares into which we all reach for inspiration, Ramsey reaches deeper than anyone else' Mark Morris