Simon Bestwick

“In the Lancashire town of Kempforth, people are vanishing.

When two-year-old Roseanne Trevor disappears, the local kids blame ‘The Spindly Men’. But even as Detective Chief Inspector Renwick vows to stop at nothing until she finds her, terrifying visions summon TV psychic Allen Cowell and his sister Vera back to the town they swore they’d left forever and local historian Anna Mason pieces together a history of cruelty and exploitation almost beyond belief.

Meanwhile, in the decaying show more corridors and lightless rooms of a long abandoned hospital, something terrible is waiting for them all.

In a chilling tale of contemporary small-town horror, Bestwick has truly evoked the terror of films such as The Orphanage and the writing of James Herbert, Adam Nevill and M R James.”

“This grim, supernaturally-loaded tale of genuine melancholy, with a compelling and well evolved plot, is tinted with a sense of despair and anguish. It’s often bleak and ugly – as a tale laced with themes of war and suffering should be – but the story underpinning it is finely crafted.”

This ambitious, well-written, densely plotted novel, grips you with cold bony fingers from the outset mixing a police investigation about missing children, the horrors of World War I and a local legend/urban myth about‘The Spindly Men’.

Bleak, cruel and full of dark melancholy this tale is unsettling especially the excerpts from the diaries....

I love this from Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review
"A good horror novel will leave you shocked or scared at what you find on each page and secretly glad that you can put the book down, at its end, and return to your normal everyday life. An excellent horror novel though, well... An excellent horror novel will leave you feeling strangely hollow to begin with as what you read demands all your mental space and will swiftly vacate any pretence you had of getting back to normality. That done, the excellent horror novel will move in; making you feel horribly uncomfortable while it settles in. It might be days, or even weeks, before it moves on and you won’t be able to get those deeply unsettling images out of your mind in the meantime. ‘The Faceless’ is an excellent horror novel and this is exactly what it has been doing to me since I read it. It will happen to you as well and that’s why you should give it a go." show less

And Cannot Come Again is not a light read. It's brilliant, but definitely not light. It's kind of a punch to the gut emotionally. I love Bestwick's style, and the emotions evoked in such a short amount of space for each story is mind-blowing. If you're looking for a truly horrifying, well-written read, then this is the book for you.

A Facebook friend has been working his way through the works shortlisted for the British Fantasy Award, and I saw this novella in my timeline and since it’s set in an underwater base, something I find fascinating, and was extremely cheap on Kindle, I decided to give it a go. And… oh dear. The title refers to an underwater complex just off the the coast of the UK. Originally built for research, it has been taken over by the military as a first line of defence against a mysterious show more underwater race who, we are told in an infodump, are now at war with humanity because of humanity’s history of polluting the oceans. The widow of the man with whom she co-designed Breakwater still works there. With the Royal Navy. And, wouldn’t you know it, the underwater people decide to attack a couple of pages into the novella, and this time it’s the biggest attack ever. The woman manages to escape, with the help of a female petty officer. They run through an empty complex, staying just ahead being drowned. But then the petty officer lets slip she’s one of the underwater people – or rather, one engineered to look human – and she belongs to a faction that wants to open dialogue with humanity… And, well, that’s it. The author doesn’t seem to understand how depth works – there’s a few mentions of airlocks and ears popping; oh, and the woman’s husband died of the bends – otherwise, changes in pressure are blithely skated over. There’s a bit of authorial prurience over the two female leads, which reads a bit old-fashioned. And something I’ve not seen in a book for years: a detailed description of the protagonist’s appearance. Who still does that? The British Fantasy Awards are, like the Hugos and Nebulas, prone to logrolling, and it’s not unusual for people well-known and well-liked among the voters to have their works find their way onto the shortlist irrespective of the quality of the work. The voting pool for the BFA is very small, probably even smaller than the average attendance of the annual Fantasycon (ie, a couple of hundred). show less

The creepiest book I have read in quite a while. Good pacing and full of atmosphere. The characters good, full. The stream of consciousness passages by the World War One vets and their horrors endured are excellent. I would never give away any plot points, but I do want to comment the ending is unsettling. Don't get me wrong, I liked it. Thought it deserving of what preceded it.