ANCIENT IMAGES - Ramsey Campbell

There's long been a rumor in the cinema world that Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff made a film together that was never released. The reasons vary slightly but it is commonly believed that there were powerful forces behind the decision and that all copies of the film were burned.  So when film researcher Sandy Allan is informed that a surviving print exists and there's an opportunity to view it, she's on board and thrilled.

But shortly before the determined viewing date, the film disappears (again), but knowing it actually exists, Sandy sets out to track it down. The person who had first contacted Sandy about the film, and who was going to show it to her, is now dead and Sandy is determined to learn as much about the film as possible.  Did the contents of the film cause her friend's death?

Sandy interviews everyone she can find who worked on or knew about the film. Actors, cameramen, wardrobe, make-up... even descendants of people who worked on the film - if there was any chance at all that they knew the films secrets, she wants to interview them.

But some secrets are meant to stay secret.

I really like the work of Ramsey Campbell and I know I like it because I've read quite a bit of it and as I was reading this I couldn't help but get a sense of déjà vu - sure enough, this book was first published in 1989 and it is very likely I read it back around that time. However, I was first convinced that I was confusing it with something else ... about a week before starting this book I had checked out a book from my local library - Alive! by Loren D. Estleman - which is about a lost screen test of Bela Lugosi testing for the role of Frankenstein's monster, which was of course made famous by Boris Karloff. Yeah ... similarities much?

Campbell's work is definitely not for every reader.  Aside from the horror and horrific themes, he writes a slow building of suspense. This is not in-your-face terror or splatterpunk, but the kind of horror that first makes you question if there's really anything so terrible and then the reader, like the protagonist, starts to get that prickly feeling at the back of the neck that there's something 'there.'

Campbell brings it all together, but there's definitely a need for the reader to be patient and to trust that the author knows what he's doing - two things that are more challenging to readers than most would admit.

I've included this in my "Vampire Week" because something Campbell writes in his "Afterworld":

It occurs to me that among other things this is my vampire novel. ... In Ancient Images we have the aristocratic family that feeds on the blood of its tenants, which could be seen as making explicit one metaphor at the heart of traditional vampire fiction. Or you could argue that the vampire here is the landscape itself, which shares the name of the doomed family in the manner of Poe.

Looking for a good book? Slow building suspenseful horror may not be for every reader, but if you think it's right for you, give Ancient Images by Ramsey Campbell a read.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

4 stars

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Ancient Images

author: Ramsey Campbell

publisher: Flame Tree Press

ISBN: 1787587649

hardcover, 304 pages