Deborah Shine - Haunting Ghost Stories - Octopus - 1984 (reprint)
I don`t post reviews of books I`ve read unless they`re very fresh in my mind and unfortunately it`s a while since I finished this one.
Still, a few general comments may be helpful.
The `old guard` are well-represented here, with stories by Walter de la Mere, H G Wells, E F Benson, M R James, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, WW Jacobs and others. Speaking personally, I never get tired of writers like these.
The remainder of the 32 stories are presumably by more recent authors.
For someone like myself, who consumes collections like this by the wheelbarrow-load, there are inevitably a couple of rather familiar tales, but not enough to take the edge off it.
There are a couple of stories I personally wouldn`t have included; Fame by Michelle Maurois is an agreeable short story, but not particularly haunting or even a ghost story, and Colin thiele`s The Phantom Horses because it doesn`t really go anywhere, and because the cod-German dialogue ("Now d`tub ve must fill mit vorter full up") will grate on the nerves of most modern readers.
In truth, not every story is in fact a ghost story but that`s not unusual with this type of anthology. For me anyway, there was a good mix of familiar and unfamiliar writers and I enjoyed it immensely.
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