Hell Train is an attempt to capture the feel of a Hammer horror film in a novel.

The writing is very good. Smooth and professional. I was a bit put off in the beginning by each chapter seeming to be an introduction that doesn't tie in to the others: The first chapter has an American screenwriter paying a visit to the Hammer Bray studio/mansion in the mid 60's. He's hired to write a script. When discussing possibilities with the head of Hammer, he mentions Peter Cushing had wanted to do a movie on a train. I'm not a Hammer fanatic, but it was fun to see all the name checking done here.

Chapter two switches to an unnamed girl bored at home. She opens a forbidden game called Hell Train and starts playing with it. The game starts with an evil train leaving her own village of Chelmsk.

Chapter three is where what seems like a traditional Hammer horror begins. An English con artist is on the run and gets lost on the trains somewhere in Eastern Europe as World War I is breaking out. He gets off in the village of Chelmsk where everyone is treating the visiting Englishman pretty badly. He's planning on boarding the midnight train out of the village, even though the villagers keep telling him they are not aware of any midnight train.

This is the bulk of the novel as we follow four of the passengers and their chilling encounters on the train.

It's funny that in a novel trying to be a love letter to all things Hammer, the format of the story being told feels more like one of the Amicus portmanteau films, with each of the four passengers having separate experiences that are almost a series of interlinked stories.

Anyway, Hell train is a fun, well-written book. Whether you are a fan of Hammer horror films or not, the book is an enjoyable read. ( )

A story within a story, and a Hammer story at that. If you've ever wondered what it must have been like to be commissioned to write a Hammer Horror script and then see it played out before your eyes then this is the book for you. It's fun to watch as the studio execs. decide who should play which role and why, though this comes right at the end just before they turn the script down because it'd blow the budget.

The story's not bad but felt a little claustrophobic at times, although given that it's set on a train that's only to be expected I suppose. I loved the little references to the old Hammer movie stars and it was great fun to see various other Hammer movies mentioned too.

If you like Hammer or even just old Horror movies then give this a shot. It's a fun little read, and quite unusual in it's own way.

Very good. ( )

The story of a demonic train bound for hell (ish) that has picked up some unsuspecting passengers. I liked the old school horror vibe, lots of nods to hammer horror movies and the greats like Christopher Lee, etc. A solid little horror novel with some seriously well written gory parts, but having read several Fowler books I couldn’t give it a 4 it wasn’t as good as Nyctophobia or some of the older stuff. ( )

Hell Train
Author: Christopher Fowler
Publisher: Solaris / Rebellion Publishing
Published In: Oxford, UK
Date: 2012
Pgs: 319

REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

Summary:
Conceived as an unfilmed Hammer film that bridges Dracula, Frankenstein, and Dr. Terror.

Eastern Europe, the First World War. A train traveling a war-torn countryside. The Arkangel comes. A casket full of fear. A mysterious red clad Countess. The Brigadier who commands through fear. Satanic rites and creatures of the bizarre, the train has left the station, hope you survive the ride.

Genre:
Fiction
Haunted
Horror
Monster
Mythology
Occult
Pulp
Thrillers
Vampires
Werewolf
Witches

Why this book:
A Hammer film unmade. Got me.
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Favorite Character:
The Red Countess starts out as a cliche, but she’s a bad ass.

Least Favorite Character:
Nicholas Castleford is an arrogant prig, con man; he is all that’s worst in the Britain of that WW1 era. As his backstory fills in, Nicolas is even more of the quintessential turn-of-the-century English cad.

Miranda, the vicar’s wife, is a very unlikable characters and well deserving of whatever fate is going to reach out of the darkness and devour her.

The difference in the two is that Nicolas seems repentant for his past life and Miranda seems on the verge of doubling down on all that is worst in her psyche.

Character I Most Identified With:
The Writer. Believe we’re all supposed to latch onto the writer and hang our hat on his accomplishment and his disappointment.

The Feel:
Opens with two quotes from Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Respectively, “There is little chance for a person to exercise the imagination today in this complex, programmed society, we have.,” And, “For a while, we really were family.” Fowler is reaching for that Hammer movie feel and I’m aboard.

I can see the Hammer Film-esque story and motif, not so much the classic horror promised on the book jacket. Though that hangs on whether and what you consider classic horror.

Poe-ish elements do build into the story as we move along.

This is very much a Hammer-ish Twilight Zone.

Great mix of everything in this story. All that’s really missing is the creepy clown. The Showman twinges a few of the same feelers, but doesn’t go full Pennywise.

Favorite Scene / Quote:
Is the coffin scratching only in Thomas’s head? He doesn’t react to the red eye staring back at him through the keyhole. He’s already Igor-ed.

When the Prince comes out, he goes big time monstrous. Thomas’s claustrophobic nightmare came alive is oogie inducing.

The Boy is tragic and a much better test for Nicholas than the Brigadier was.

Isabella’s confrontation with her uncle, the Controller. His expounding on their having always been sacrifices in their village even before the Arkangel, and their family’s involvement in all those actions.

The last game bit climax of the story within the story, but not the overarching story, is classic horror, very Hammer-esque. Love it. Poor Isabella. Well done cyclic bit of storytelling there.

Pacing:
Well paced, short chapters. A good fast read.

Plot Holes/Out of Character:
If the paradigm doesn’t shift, the “each chapter introduces another character” trope will become ungainly.

The characters wanton disregard of their current circumstances and suspension of disbelief is trying. Especially in light of their constant reference to their life circumstances outside of the scope of the novel.

Hmm Moments:
Between the tavern sign showing a monstrous train running over the dismembered nude body and the description given by the urchin at the train station for the train running at midnight reminds of Blaine the Mono is Stephen King’s Dark Tower series.

The Specimen escaping the collector’s cage and going on his rampage. Eeewww. Bug that eat people, considering everything else in this story, this skeeves me out.

And, finally, the Conductor stacks the deck. Zombies.

WTF Moments:
The Tortured Virgin Inn and its train running over a victim sign wouldn’t have made it passed the Censor in the story inside the story inside the story. Convoluted sounding, but, at least early on in the book, it works. May be overleveled.

Is the cliched innkeeper’s daughter the eponymous virgin from the inn’s name and sign? She is described as looking just like the victim on the sign. That’s downright grubby. Nicolas when he enters the tavern does comment, internally, on her resemblance to the train’s victim on the sign.

Meh / PFFT Moments:
The chauffeur swerves in with a huge backstory that overwhelms what is going on around him, and, then, topples from the train.

Expected Nicholas’s test to end in redemption, and it seemed to, but it goes pretty ambiguous when he leaves the Arkangel.

The origin of the Arkangel is half good and half cliche that pastiche its 1880s era founding with the Holocaust trains of Germany feels stretched when the time frames are considered.

The Conductor’s zombie assault comes up short in the potential horror aspects of it. Nicholas is wounded and could be dying. Isabela has lost the majority of her clothes and is largely clothed in just her resolve to save Nicholas and herself. The zombie factor set against those two set pieces could have ramped up the tension, but it comes across as just one more thing to overcome in a long line of circumstances to overcome.

Why isn’t there a screenplay?
Don’t believe the story would work as a movie, too many moving parts. A rewrite to script form might save it, but you’d probably need to lose the story within a story, within a story, within a story matrix that abounds.
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Last Page Sound:
They screwed the writer. Set him up to write the best story that he could and...then, passed on the script, his “greatest” work, and, thereby, blocked him from taking it to their rival. Damn. That’s slick. And as the writer suspects, the Devil’s bargain of his own.

Author Assessment:
I’d read more by Fowler in a heartbeat.

Editorial Assessment:
Well put together.

Knee Jerk Reaction:
instant classic

Disposition of Book:
Denton Public Library,
Denton, TX

Dewey Decimal System:
F
FOW

Would recommend to:
friends, family, kids, colleagues, everyone, genre fans, no one
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Christopher Fowler takes a break from his beloved geriatric detctives Bryant and May to delve back into his supernatural roots in this diabolical pastiche, Hell Train. Although the book has recieved generally good reviews, as a long-time fan I was bitterly disappointed and while the premise is good, the writing is way below his usual standard.

The story is set in 1966 when screen writer Shane Carter approaches Hammer Horror at their Bray Studios for a job: although they were past their peak, they were still the leaders in the horror genre and Shane was delighted to be offered the chance to give a treatment for their next project, a film set on board a train.

The reader is then taken into his story, set in Eastern Europe, 1916, where Nicholas, an unscrupulous English adventurer, seduces a local girl [Isabella] and they flee her village just ahead of an invading army and, of more immediate danger, the angry townsfolk.

The only means of escape is via a cursed midnight train called the Arkangel, full of doomed souls travelling to Hell. It's up to Nicholas and Isabella to prove they do not belong among the damned and to leave the train before it reaches the end of the line...

Always impressive as a social historian, Fowler brings his setting to life and offers a fascinating and by all acounts fairly accurate account of the unbelievably improvised and casual methods of British Film making back in the 1960s. What ruins the book is the style of writing: there's a fine line between clever parody and purple prose and while Fowler may have intended to pastiche the cliched drama and hammish style of the B-Grade Hammer Horror films, the story reads badly. ( )