I stumbled upon this in my collection while looking for something other.
It was published in 1975 as a paperback in the Vampir Horror Roman.
Like all of these monthly books it was abridged as the line had a fixed length of 145 pages at the time. So the content is smaller than the original. The line-up is:
The Recompensing of Albano Pizar by Basil Copper
Like Two White Spiders by Eddy C. Bertin
The Long-Term Residents short story by Kit Pedler
Haggopian by Brian Lumley
Were-Creature by Kenneth Pembrooke
Events at Poroth Farm by T. E. D. Klein
The book has the title "The Deathbird". Don't ask me why, It doesn't make much sense. Maybe because of the cover.
I had forgotten, that it contains the Klein, which served as a the basis for his monumental
The Ceremonies.
Like I wrote before, the reception - or my reception, to be honest - changes a lot over the years. I have no recollection of reading this, but I surely did back then. So none of the tales made a lasting impression. Today I surely see the merit of some of those tales, which my seventeen year old self was incapable of.
Still I would say this isn't an outstanding antholgy. Okay to very good. Which is a good result in itself.
Copper is a nice and well written revenge tale. His old-fashioned style captures the atmosphere quite well, and I have grown to like stories about books.
Bertin is okay, a bit too Bloch for me, well done, but not very original.
Pedler was a nice surprise.Not the plot itself, which has surely been done to death. (and frankly I didn't understand the ending, which can always be a problem of the translation) But I liked the atmosphere and the characterisation very much, thought the observations about life and aging spot on.
Lumley is one of his Cthulhu tales. Frankly I had forgotten how bulky - unwieldy? - his short stories are. It is basically a monologue surrounded by some framing narrative, just another version of the Innsmouth theme. This sounds more negative than intended. If you want subtle, you don't read Lumley, I guess.
Pembrooke is a - at the time - clever variation of the werewolf-tale. It is well done.
Klein of course is a famous story. I still like it, it makes me want to re-read the novel. I had so smile about the narrators observations, the patience one sometimes needs to read the old classics, his conclusions about Radclife, Maturin, Machen, Blackwood. Of course these are topics which back then I surely skipped. It is quite sad that the Vampir Horror Roman always cut the introductions the originals had. On the other hand, I guess in 1977, when I bought this and others of the line at a reduced price in a department store, I would have skipped those also.
This was the last of the UK Years Best Horrors but what a way to go!
