The Searching Dead by Ramsey Campbell
I would like to thank Anna from Random Things Tours and Flame Tree Press for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Flame Tree Press
Published – Out Now
Price - £9.95 paperback £5.99 eBook
Dominic Sheldrake has never forgotten his childhood in fifties Liverpool or the talk an old boy of his grammar school gave about the First World War. When his history teacher took the class on a field trip to France it promised to be an adventure, not the first of a series of glimpses of what lay in wait for the world. Soon Dominic would learn that a neighbour was involved in practices far older and darker than spiritualism, and stumble on a secret journal that hinted at the occult nature of the universe. How could he and his friends Roberta and Jim stop what was growing under a church in the midst of the results of the blitz? Dominic used to write tales of their exploits, but what they face now could reduce any adult to less than a child...
Historical fiction in fantasy and horror very often seems fixated on the Victorian gothic past not surprising as it chimes well with many classic ghost stories; plus let’s not forget that gaslight and shadows in big houses can create a great unsettling atmosphere. But perhaps something a little more recent can also cast an unsettling electric light on our more recent past. In Ramsey Campbell’s The Searching Dead I was sent on a trip to my own hometown just seventy years past to a world where a young teenager finds growing up is a lot harder when supernatural forces are involved.
In 1952 Dominic Sheldrake is a standard Liverpudlian schoolboy just about to start at a Catholic secondary school. His friends Jim and Bobbie (not quite yet one of the girls) have become unofficially known as the Tremendous Three. It’s a changing post-WW2 world many science fiction novels call to Dominic; technology like fridges and TVs are starting to appear in homes and the catholic schoolteachers rail against well…everything. But Dom gets fascinated by a new charismatic teacher Mr Christian Noble who challenges orthodoxy in life, morality, and religion – unusual in a traditional catholic environment. Mr Noble though has another side-line – working at an unorthodox church helping people speak to the dead. One of Dominic’s neighbours the widow Mrs Norris is strangely telling people that her husband is back in her life (yet is not too pleased by this) and Dominic starts to see strange shapes in the nearby graveyard. Mr Noble is increasingly becoming a dangerous figure in Dominic’s life.
This is an unusual tale. It’s fascinating to see a version of Liverpool that I recognise – this is the land of my parents and grandparents and early 1980’s Liverpool wasn’t that much different for me. A very working-class Liverpool pre-Beatles one mainly damaged by bombs and a world where a traditional quite conservative social order is on the cusp of big changes. Campbell himself a citizen of my fair city captures the tone and cadences of the city perfectly. I found this world fascinating in a non-supernatural way it portrays a complicated time when people were working out what happens after the war. The all-boys school that Dominic goes to is one ruled by priests and monks I know from family tales is very very familiar, accurate and unsettling. And the life of teenagers (in a time when teenagers didn’t yet exist) is scary – parents are to be obeyed, teachers can hit you and a wife will not be believed if her husband talks to the police. A fascinating world is crafted but not one I’d like to live in but it is wonderful worldbuilding delivered by Dominic’s narration carefully explaining the world and as told by his later self adds colour, some horror and perspective. This isn’t a YA adventure it’s an adult talking about a very strange experience they’re still processing which I found very effective. I will call though call out that there is a one use of a racist insult that I saw no reason why it needed to be in the text even for supposed accuracy of how people spoke at the time and didn’t add anything to the story.
The supernatural element of this tale (that starts a trilogy) is I would say more a creeping sense of eeriness and dread than full throated horror. It is a tale of weird things that aren’t supposed to happen and this isn’t the gothic but a time when people were starting to turn to science to explain things. It can be a strange shadow in a graveyard, a pensioner that talks as if their dead husband is there in front of you. a WW1 veteran that tells you terrible tales rather than grand adventures or a two-year-old who knows and sees too much. The whole novel has an air of something not being quite right and as our main characters are powerless kids there is little that they can really do to influence events. This does mean that Dominic feels more observer in this story rather than active participant to battling whatever Mr Noble is up to; but I sense that will change in future stories. Campbell adds in other narratives from a strange diary and newspaper columns to expand the story and the whole feel is of storytelling delivered extremely well.
Overall, I enjoyed this trip into a past that for me rings very true but those expecting constant frights may be disappointed as this is a tale that takes it’s time to be told. The kind of story you’d wrap up on a darkening evening and read all he way through but worry about the shadows or noises you can hear just outside your window.
