Book Impressions - Asylum, 13 Tales of Terror by Matt Drabble

As the name suggests this is a collection of 13 horror short stories. There is also a meta story that ties the different tales together. As with many short story collections the stories are of uneven quality, although all are good, a few really stand out. For me the story about the old actor was simply brilliant. A simple idea that worked very well.

The meta story was a little predicatable, but effective enough as a wrapper for the disparate tales.

The author's writing is good and he manages to to tell each individual story with its own style. I enjoyed reading the collection and would recommend it for horror fans.

The new novel from author of the UK Amazon Horror Chart #4 hit “Gated”

Blackwater Heights is a building with a long dark history, some of it is well known but more is shrouded in myth and legend. None more so than that of its founding father Horace Whisker.
Martin Parcell is an ex-journalist with shattered dreams of an author’s career. Sidelined through a car crash’s injuries, he finds himself forced through governmental austerity measures having to take a custodians position at a private mental health hospital. A writer with undoubted talent, but an author without a story.

He begins his new job deep in depression and drowning under waves of his lost dreams. On his first night he meets Jimmy, his elderly supervisor who has spent most of his life within the hospital walls. Jimmy is nearing retirement age and desperate to rest his weary bones. Jimmy offers Martin a way out for both of them, access to the background histories and stories of the hospital’s patients. A collection of 13 tales from the darkly disturbed minds of the residents of Blackwater Heights.

As the long night unwinds, Martin finds himself deeply troubled as the tales unfold before him and threaten to drag him down into their insanity.

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