I reviewed the 7th Black Book of Horror a year ago, as Strange Things was just launching, and here we are twelve months later with the next volume. Well, they do say good things come to those who wait… and this is a good thing.

Once again, this is a collection of short stories that will resonate with fans of 1970s horror compendiums, and who are perhaps but off by some of the more dominant anthologies out there, which often seem to be more of a closed shop for old mates of the editor than the actual pick of what is out there (unless you believe that the same authors, year in, year out always write the best horror stories).

I imagine some of the self-proclaimed horror elite might well turn their noses up at much of the content here, which offers a mix of gruesome, sometimes crude, sometimes socially conservative stories. But so what? I doubt anyone included here is too worried about being respectable. And while a couple of tales do indeed seem to have a slightly reactionary bent to them, isn’t horror supposed to challenge our beliefs?

This is quite a solid collection – there’s nothing terrible here, with the thirteen stories ranging from the entertaining (if predictable) to the excellent. Reggie Oliver’s opening tale Quieta Non Movere gets things off to a slow-burn start, with his tale of a vengeful ghost (or is it zombie) priest, and ghostly experiences return in David A. Riley’s The Last Coach Trip and Stephen Bacon’s Home by the Sea, which sees an abuser revisited by the ghosts of his past.

Mark Samuels’ The Other Tenant is a classic story of something strange going on in the flat next door that ends with a brutal and gruesome payoff, while Gary Fry’s Behind the Screen reveals the dangers of telling strangers too much about your life – and having a video link to your family at home.

David Williams’ Boys will be Boys, Thana Niveau’s The Coal Man and Anna Taborska’s Little Pig all deal with childhood terrors – in the former story, the terroriser is very much the mutant, hyper-intelligent child who is unwilling to share his parents with any new arrival, while The Coal Man is a grim story of invented bogeyman characters becoming real, and Little Pig is a brutally bleak story of sacrifice and desperation – probably the least ‘horror’ story in the collection, but certainly one of the most affecting.

Paul Finch’s Tok sees an African fetish doll coming to life to protect its owner from imaginary fears, while Marion Pitman’s Music in the Bone is a story of sexual obsession and the search for the perfect musical instrument (horror fans will need no clues as to what materials make up such instruments). Kate Farrell’s Mea Culpa is a tale of domestic violence with a neat twist at the end.

The two stories that theoretically stray into Daily Mail reader area are Tina & Tony Rath’s Casualties of the System and John Llewellyn Probert’s How the Other Half Dies. The former sees young offenders sent back in time by their social workers to face a more appropriate punishment, while the latter has a respectable couple torturing a burglar. Both are, I suspect, more satirical than wishful thinking, but more sensitive Guardian readers might be distressed by their take on law and order.

So, another impressive mixture of cold chills and grotesque splatter. Once again, I highly recommend this for anyone who misses the days when tales of (as the back cover says) beasts, brutes, the creepy and the unsettling filled the shelves.

DAVID FLINT

BUY IT NOW (UK)