The Face That Must Die is rather a disturbing read. Ramsey Campbell gives us a look inside the tortured mind of a killer, one who evoked a number of different emotions from me as the story progressed. The man Horridge is a sad, unhappy soul who has pretty much lost everything he once had, including his old home. He now lives in a section of cheap tenements which he regards as a concrete prison. His memories are full of tragic experiences, but the unpleasantness of what has already happened pales in comparison to the increasingly paranoid thoughts running through his disturbed mind. He believes that everyone is out to get him, and he is particularly suspicious of foreigners and gay men. The story begins with the backdrop of a couple of ghastly murders of gay men, and Horridge is convinced he has seen the killer. After a close encounter with the supposed murderer, he sets out to harass the man and thereby protect his own safety by letting him know that he is on to him. As his fears increase, he takes increasingly bold actions that his poor mind tells him are right and just. Simultaneous to his story we have a running commentary on the dysfunctional life of a husband and wife living in the same building as the man Horridge believes is the murderer. As is so often the case with Ramsey Campbell's characters, it is almost impossible to like them, especially the drug addict husband. Naturally, the paths of these main characters cross in the end to present the reader with a pretty effective conclusion to the novel.
The novel is not half as disturbing as Campbell's very personal introduction. In "At the Back of My Mind: A Guided Tour," he offers up an autobiographical account of his unusual childhood and the mental derangement of his mother. He basically never saw his father growing up, although he still lived in the same house with him. On her own, his mother basically lost her mind. Campbell describes her overwhelming fears: strangers would appear in her home and stare at her, she would never change clothes because she claimed someone stole her good clothes and replaced them with rags, her neighbors were trying to poison her, she became convinced that her home was not her own but another one that looked just like it, etc. Campbell acknowledges that his account sounds rather cold-hearted, but he felt it was important to say all these things; it is an attempt on his part to somehow describe why he writes the things he writes. It certainly does make the character of Horridge have much more of an impact on the reader, for he exhibits the same kinds of paranoia that Campbell's mother did.
The book also contains a strange little short story called "I Am It and It is I," which is a little disturbing in itself, but the meat of this literary meal of horror is to be found in the foreword and in the novel itself. The Face That Must Die is a fascinating read that, despite the typically bleak setting and troubled characters that seem to always fill Campbell's novels, is sure to set up permanent housekeeping in one of the darker corners of your mind. I can't say I've ever read another horror novel quite like this one.
