The Ghost Quartet

Marvin Kaye has edited numerous original anthologies, most in the fantasy or horror genres, and The Ghost Quartet is the latest in the series. This consists of four novellas dealing with, obviously ghosts: Brian Lumley tells a wonderfully atmospheric tale set upon the Devon Moors in "The Place of Waiting"; Orson Scott Card takes Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and reimagines the causation of the events in "Hamlet's Father"; Kaye himself tells a humourous yet deadly story set in Scotland, where he reveals the history behind "The Haunted Single Malt"; and Tanith Lee gives us an alternative Russia in "Strindberg's Ghost Sonata." These are all wildly different takes on the idea of the ghost story, which is what one wants in an anthology - after all, show more who wants to read slight variations on a theme repeated over and over and over again? - and generally they all work, although I wasn't taken with Lee's tale, the final in the book, because it read more like a fantasy (even being set in a realm not quite of the Earth that we know) than a ghost story and so it didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the anthology. Her writing was fine as always; it's just the story didn't work. For me, that is, you might have a different reaction. In any event, well worth searching out if you, like me, enjoy tales that are not quite as they seem; recommended! show less