Hell Train

by Christopher Fowler

Overview

Imagine there was a classic supernatural chiller that Hammer Films never made. A grand epic produced at the studio's peak, which played like a cross between the Dracula and Frankenstein films and Dr Terror's House Of Horrors...Four passengers meet on a train journey through Eastern Europe during the First World War, and face a mystery that must be solved if they are to survive. As the Arkangel races through the war-torn countryside, they must find out: What is in the casket that everyone is so afraid of? What is the tragic secret of the veiled Red Countess who travels with them? Why is their fellow passenger the army brigadier so feared by his own men? And what exactly is the devilish secret of the Arkangel itself? Bizarre creatures, satanic rites, terrified passengers and the romance of travelling by train, all in a classically styled horror novel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781849973175
Publisher:	Rebellion Publishing Ltd
Publication date:	12/27/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	157,356
File size:	534 KB

About the Author

Born in Greenwich, London, Christopher Fowler has written for film, television, radio, graphic novels, and for national newspapers. He is a regular columnist for both UK The Independent on Sunday and the Financial Times. Fowler is the multi-award winning author of more than thirty novels and ten short-story collections, including the lauded Bryant & May Peculiar Crimes Unit mystery novels. In 2010 was nominated for eight national book awards.

Editorial Reviews

The affection of British Fantasy Award–winner Fowler for classic Hammer Films horror movies pays off in this intricately recursive tale of terror. In London, 1966, American writer Shane Carter is given less than five days to come up with a script for Hammer’s next Peter Cushing vehicle. Given only the vague guidance that the plot should have something to do with a train, Carter finds an old board game called Hell Train. The narrative shifts to a story within the story, as an unnamed young girl ignores the warning message on the same game, and then to the conceit of the game itself: a disparate group of desperate people in 1916 Carpathia board a mysterious midnight train to an unknown destination. Fowler (the Bryant and May series) neatly incorporates many of the Hammer studio’s trademarks: “young lovers, fearsome creatures, a dire warning, rituals and curses, and dreadful consequences.” The shocks never stop coming, bolstered by crisp writing and well-defined, sympathetic characters. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly