Nameless, The [Paperback]

It's a shame that Ramsey Campbell isn't as widely read as many of his peers - he is one of the most literate horror authors living or dead; his powerful scares are framed in a hypnotically paranoid prose which impregnates everything with menace and threat. The Nameless, a relatively early novel shows just how much potential Campbell has in the genre with its occasional flashes of genius - overall, however it isn't entirely satisfying.

Barbara Waugh's infant daughter Angela went missing nine years ago and was presumed dead when a mutilated corpse dressed in her clothes was found near her house. Nine years on, Barbara has gotten over her death and is a successful literary agent; however one day she receives a telephone call from a little girl who seems to be Angela. Initially, suspecting a sick hoax, Barbara tries to put it out of her mind; but as the calls persist she begins to suspect they may be more than a twisted joke. She's eventually sent on a nightmarish chase in search of Angela, and before long realises that a strange cult, obsessed with torture and sadism, may have Angela in their custody.

This pretty short novel is drenched in that classic Campbellian condition, Paranoia; it's written with such intensity, with such a morbid fixation on anything which makes the characters uncomfortable and suspicious, that the reader is constantly on-edge. Every sense is assaulted by the rough, noisy and utterly cheerless world of The Nameless, where it seems everything is dangerous and laden with corruption. There's barely a paragraph of tranquillity among the pages of disorientating prose - for people who normally feast on garbage horror fiction, they may be surprised by how capable Campbell's prose is.

I guess the horror of the novel will be more painfully relevant if you have children; the loss of a child and the almost unimaginable tangle of intense anxiety, desperation and restlessness must be unbearable if you suspected your terrified child was in the company of a cult who get up to terrible acts of sadistic murder. Campbell handles the psychology of Barbara well, and her tortured emotions were very believable. But of course a more traditional type of horror is also offered here; there are two very frightening episodes in the book where a character plunders an abode of the cult - their claustrophobic and shabby interiors are rendered superbly, and the fate of one of the plunderers after gaining a cellar chilled me to my core on a sunny afternoon. Another episode in the midst of a motorway concrete jungle was rich in dark imagery and filled with subtle nods to possible supernatural entities lurking here and there. Oh yes, when Campbell decides to let the horror run freely, his writing packs one hell of a punch.

But that's where a few problems in the book are made apparent. These powerful and disturbing interludes of horror just don't appear frequently enough in the novel. Much of the book reads a bit like a detective novel, with Barbara chasing down leads and tracking down people who may be able to offer valuable information; and even though these portions are suffused with creepy little motifs, episodes of full blown horror occurred just a little too infrequently for my liking. Another mistake was the unconvincing cobweb thing which dispatched a character near the start - one of the few instances where Campbell unintentionally makes his reader laugh.

However, the most galling thing about The Nameless is its utterly shoddy ending. The 20 or so pages up to the very end of the novel were some of the most frightening and compelling passages of horror fiction I can remember reading; the sense of impending doom mixed with betrayal, cruelty and out-right terror really had me glued to the book. But for some stupid reason Campbell chickened out of giving us the full culmination of evil that he'd spent the entire novel setting up and instead succumbed to a load of deus ex machina nonsense to give the novel a quasi happy ending. I felt the book's final act really was steamrollering along into one of the most fittingly nasty conclusions in horror, but Campbell had different plans, and gave the novel a heartbreakingly weak resolution. I haven't read many books which have been marred so strikingly by the mistake of a bad ending. The last 4 or 5 pages were so crushingly disappointing, they alone take a 4 star novel down to a 3 star one.

The Nameless does, however come recommended for its deft use of language, intriguing plot and a few slices of impeccable horror writing; make no mistake, certain areas of this book are very evocative and scary indeed.

They have no names. They hide their rituals of blood and terror away from prying eyes. Their dark secrets are known only to the initiated - and to their victims, for whom the truth has dawned too late. They are the Nameless. And now they seek a new victim.