In 2008 Horowitz's publishers decided to republish his old 1999 Horror anthologies Horowitz Horror: Stories You'll Wish You Never Read and Horrowitz Horror 2 (also published under the title More Horowitz Horror). But instead of just reproducing those two volumes in their entirety they chose to divide them up into separately sold smaller books containing usually two (but sometimes three short stories). To annoy those who maybe have one of the anthologies already they decided that these new smaller books would take one story from Horowitz Horror 1 and the other from Horowitz Horror 2. So if you plan on reading all these books it's obviously much better value for money to buy the two anthologies than all these books separately. Incidentally I have no idea why Amazon has put the words (Alex Rider) in brackets after this title as it has nothing to do with that series which came along after Horowitz had made his name as children's horror author and decided to get into the action spy genre (where granted he has probably been a lot more successful), nor is Alex in any of these books.
Anyway back to reviewing this book. The two stories in The Phone Goes Dead are obviously the title story of the same name as well as Horrowitz's weakest story from the two anthologies Bath Night. The first involves David, a 16 year old boy on the Isle Wight receiving a second hand mobile phone for his birthday whose previous owner was killed in a lightning storm while sheltering under a tree in London's Hyde Park. One day he gets a call from a stranger telling him to pass on a message to a woman who used to work at his parents' hotel. Unbeknownst to David, the caller has been dead for a while.
Bath Time has Isabel, a teenage girl being forced by eccentric parents to use a new (well old) Victorian bath they bought. It seems intent on boiling her alive, covering her in blood and all kinds of things which she tells her parents. Of course they don't believe her.
Although this book has the best looking cover (with a nice grim reaper surrounded by foliage) I'd get one of the other books in this series before this one.
If you've only read the Groosham Grange series this series of books is a little bit heavier in subject matter. Groosham Grange and its sequel The Unholy Grail are a bit more cartoony monster horror style than these more realistic thriller scare stories.
