Ramsey Campbell - The Face That Must Die

[sean]

Some covers:

Star 1979


Tor 1985


Scream Press(?)


Macdonald 1991


Unused cover for '91 edition


Another unused cover for the '91 edition


Millipede Press 2005


BLURB (from the Star edition):

The face haunted him. The identikit face that he'd seen in the flesh. Not a line of it deceived him. It was the face of a killer.

He'd told the police - but they were in on it too. Everyone ignored him when he pointed the killer out. Were they all blind? Were they all as perverted and disgusting as the murderer himself?

Horridge knew, though. They may all laugh at him, plot against him, but he knew. He followed the killer. He watched the flat. And as he watched he came to a momentous decision. The face was guilty. The face must die.


Borderline schizophrenic John Horridge has a thing against homosexuals. This aside, he thinks he knows the identity of a killer who has recently done away with two young male prostitutes, and is determined to act. Using electoral registers in a local library, he finds that the man is called Ray Craig (one of those homosexuals he loathes so much), who lives in a flat on Aigburth Drive. Armed with this information, he starts a campaign of harrasment against Craig (who is, of course, completely innocent). This begins with a phone call to the police, and a string of other calls directly to his victim. The police check up on Craig, discover that the call was merely malicious and Horridge is forced to act himself. His course of action ends with a corpse, slashed to death with a straight-edged razor (in a dead-pan scene which is all the more disturbing for its lack of emotion).

Cathy and Peter, a couple that live on the top floor are obviously more than a little freaked out by having a murder committed just downstairs). Peter, student and pothead, is more worried about the police sniffing round than anything else, but Cathy is seriously on-edge. Even more so when she finds that Fanny, the artist who lives on the middle floor is going away for a while.

As it happens, Fanny doesn't get to go anywhere, because Horridge has remembered that she would be able to give a description of him to the police, and that he had left fingerprints all over her room on a previous visit (in the guise of a private detective). Using the key he has aquired, he enters the flat after Fanny leaves for her holiday. Unfortunately for her, she has forgotten her tickets and has to return to get them...

By now Horridges is feeling hunted, and plans to escape to North Wales (my neck of the woods), to a cottage where he had spent time as a child. He has no money for a train ticket, so hatches a plan to force Peter to drive him there. Peter can't drive. But Cathy can.

There, everything is resolved. Until the epilogue, which contains a nice uneasy twist.

In a way, this novel suits its Star edition, although it was apparently cut by about 20,000 words for publication. Some later editions (the Millipede press one) restores the text to its full version. Anyway, its a bloody good novel. Horridge is a creepy guy, and the workings of his paranoid mind are convincingly described. There's also at least one laugh out loud scene, when the homophobic killer decides to visit the cinema to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show and is utterly flabbergasted by what he sees on the screen. Definitely worth a read.

[dem]

It's been some time since I read Face ... but I decided at the time that the scariest thing about it was Ramsey's extraordinary and painful introduction, At The Back Of My Mind: A Guided Tour in the MacDonald edition (and probably most of the other post-Star's ?).

[sean]

It also appears in Ramsey Campbell, Probably as well. It came up in another thread recently (Bushwick mentioned it) - seems like it makes an impression on most people that have read it, and understandably so.

[coral]

My introduction to Ramsey Campbell, a mere 6 years ago, was this novel.
Nothing is so believable, when you're reading it, as a Ramsey Campbell novel, and I was impressed enough to devour all the rest.

[albie]

Brr. A serial killer novel written and published at the time of the Yorkshire Ripper killings. That took balls.

And it has a character called Peter in it!

[erebus]

I managed to pick this up this very week. The Star 1979 version to.
This may be a blasphemy but I have never read a Campbell book. Is this a good way to start on this. I have Scared Stiff and have read a few of his shorts but never a full novel. Will Face make me an addict ??

[dem]

Don't know if it will make you an addict, but Face ... is as good a place as any to start, especially as in the Star edition he brings it in at a tidy 170 pages. From memory, John Horridge is a convincing, truly frightening creation but the most terrifying and depressing thing about the novel is the Cantril Farm estate which, of course, Campbell didn't have to invent.

Best shut up, as i'm making me want to re-read it now.

The Face Must Die, Skinner, Night Must Fall, Jill Rips, By Flower & Dean Street .... There's a potentially decent thread to be had in the post-war British psycho novel .....

[Craig Herbertson]

Mar 13, 2009 15:03:51 GMT erebus said:

I managed to pick this up this very week. The Star 1979 version to.
This may be a blasphemy but I have never read a Campbell book.?

Read my first a few weeks ago. Obsession. Wasn't bowled over really. Preferred the simplicity of James Herbert

[David A. Riley]

Craig Herbertson wrote:

Read my first a few weeks ago. Obsession. Wasn't bowled over really.

I read Obsession many years ago and must confess I can't remember a thing about it. The Face That Must Die, on the other hand, which I read even earlier I still can, vividly, and is one of a few novels by RC I would gladly read again.

I think his novels are very hit and miss, with some duds amongst them (for me anyway).

David

[Craig Herbertson]

I'm glad you said that David.

I admit I might have approached Obsession with high expectations as RC gets high praise from all corners. For me it was cleverly plotted, clever concept had fairly good characterisation but at times seemed sloppily written and of course, the litmus test - I didn't actually enjoy it.

In the genre lately I've read RE Howard, James Herbert, Marjorie Bowen and Stephen King as well as numerous shorts. I'm not an enormous King fan - like to see his work made into films - but even given that caveat all of them seemed more accessible than Obsession.

Hides in steel bunker.

What is Campbell's best work so I can redress this?

[albie]

Obsession is a sketchy novel. I've read it a few times, because it vanishes from the memory. It gets better. I would choose INCARNATE everytime. It's the one most like his short stories.

[allthingshorror]

I have quite a soft spot for The Doll Who Ate Its Mother. First one I ever read of his. Not that great, but it's Campbell you know. He's an institution much like Corrie.

[carolinec]

Mar 14, 2009 12:00:09 GMT Craig Herbertson said:

What is Campbell's best work so I can redress this?

His novella, "Needing Ghosts" - without question the best RC I've ever read. But then I do have very strange taste in weirdness ...

[albie]

His general view of the world is what I read him for. The lucid fakery of reality itself, is as best as I can make it sound. I haven't read a writer who conjures up such an internal oddness. Nothing looks right, when he's doing it right. I don't even know if you could call it dreamlike. Only in a sense that things are wrong looking. Maybe I just have a tumor.

[pinsleepe]

[quote author=carolinec board=scaredstiff thread=1482 post=15507 time=1237048817His novella, "Needing Ghosts" - without question the best RC I've ever read. But then I do have very strange taste in weirdness ... [/quote]

Needing Ghosts is very weird. I'm not sure that I understood it, but it is a stupendous piece of writing: surreal, bizarre, nightmarish. I felt like I was hallucinating when reading it. Campbell is in a class all his own.