Creatures Of The Pool Ramsey Campbell ISBN: 9780843963847 (US, Leisure, Paperbck) ISBN: 9781848630413 (UK, PS Publishing, Hardback)

Some of the best scares can be found lurking just beneath the surface of our familiar reality. Ramsey Campbell's latest novel definitely proves this. When Gavin Meadows' father disappears, his comfortable, cosy life of conducting spooky history tours of Liverpool is turned upside down.

Gavin sets out to locate him, as the local police seem strangely uninterested, and soon finds himself being drawn, initially reluctantly, into his father's odd beliefs (mysterious things lurking in the tunnels beneath Liverpool's streets). He slowly becomes aware that the old man wasn't as crazy as Gavin had previously thought.

His job suffers; his relationships begin to crumble as he finds himself unable to trust anyone, as his quest to find his father, and the truth behind his father's odder beliefs, becomes an obsession. And with Campbell narrating the tale in first person you find yourself accompanying Gavin on his downward spiral.

This is horror that unnerves you; sends a chill up your spine through eerie atmospherics rather than out and out scares. It's also a book that takes its time to build up the intensity. If you are looking for a book that totters between gory bloodfests and demon attacks on alternate pages you're probably not going to pick this up. But if you like creepy horror, the kind that worms its way under your skin, then you could do a lot worse than this.

Page updated 19 June, 2010