Christopher Fowler: The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 10

Joe R. Lansdale’s Rumble, Tumble was the latest Hap and Leonard crime novel in which Hap Collins’ girlfriend learned that her teenage daughter was part of a hellish prostitution ring and the two friends were forced to confront a biker army turned vice barons and stone-mad killers. Norman Partridge’s The Ten-Ounce Siesta was the second volume in the enjoyable Jack Baddalach mysteries, in which the standard-issue good guy became involved with bikini girls with machine guns, cops with donuts, the heavyweight champion of the world, and a demon from Hell.

Voodoo Child by Michael Reaves was predictably set in New Orleans, while John Pritchard’s Dark Ages took place in present-day Oxford but harkened back to earlier horrors. A massacre in the 12th century resulted in a modern-day haunting in Jenny Jones’ Where the Children Cry. Mary Murrey’s The Inquisitor concerned a depressed woman who became involved with pagan mythology, while a young widow joined a village coven of white witches in The Witching Time by Jean Stubbs.

John Evans’ Gordius was a sequel to the author’s God’s Gift, Nick DiMartino’s A Seattle Ghost Story was illustrated by Charles Nitti, and Black as Blood by Rob Chilson was a humorous novel about a body that would not stay dead.

Reporter-turned-sleuth Hollis Ball was helped by her husband’s ghost in Ghost of a Chance by Helen Chappell, and David Beaty’s The Ghosts of the Eighth Attack involved a RAF squadron in World War II haunted by phantom flyers from the First World War. A supernatural western set in Mexico, Loren D. Estleman’s Journey of the Dead involved an ancient alchemist and the man who killed Billy the Kid.

A woman accused of murdering her husband claimed she was possessed by his first wife in A Mind to Kill by Andrea Hart, while in Richard La Plante’s Mind Kill, a serial killer stalked his victims in their dreams. A psychic female criminal profiler tracked down a serial killer who took his victim’s eyes in Joseph Glass’ aptly-titled Eyes, and a psychic journalist investigated the death of a colleague in Second Sight by Beth Amos.

The spirit of a dead serial killer returned in Kimberly Rangel’s The Homecoming, a woman’s paintings were connected to a serial killer in Retribution by Elizabeth Forrest (Rhondi Salsitz), and the victim of a recently-released serial killer was apparently reincarnated in a musician in Roxanne Conrad’s Copper Moon.

A serial killer menaced a near-future Glasgow in Paul Johnston’s The Bone Yard, and The Coffin Maker by Jeffery Deaver featured quadriplegic detective Lincoln Rhymes matching wits with a killer who planned to eliminate three important witnesses in a grand jury trial. Will Kingdom’s The Cold Calling was a police procedural involving yet another serial killer, as was Shaun Hutson’s Purity.

In The Last Days: The Apocryphon of Joe Panther by Australian writer Andrew Masterton, a priest was suspected of being a brutal serial killer, while an isolated boarding house for children and a religious cult based on sex and the authority of a messianic figure featured in Carmel Bird’s Red Shoes, another down-under novel, this one narrated by a guardian angel.

A woman about to commit suicide found an unconscious angel on the roof of her Manhattan apartment in Nancy A. Collins’ romantic dark fantasy Angels on Fire. The eponymous prince of Hell inhabited a dead body in James Byron Huggins’ Cain, and demon detectives set out to recover stolen crystal orbs in Camille Bacon-Smith’s Eyes of the Empress.

Jeff Rovin’s Vespers involved a police detective and a zoologist who discovered that millions of mutant killer bats had migrated to Manhattan. It was reportedly “soon to be a major motion picture”. In Dust by scientist Charles Pellegrino, a maverick palaeobiologist discovered that Mother Nature was attempting to wipe-out mankind through a series of natural plagues and disasters. Red Shadows by Yvonne Navarro was a sequel to the author’s Final Impact and set on a post-apocalyptic Earth that no longer rotated.

Frances Gordon’s Changeling was based on the Rumpelstiltskin fairy story, and The Pit and the Pendulum and Frankenstein were the latest erotic reworkings of horror classics in The Darker Passions series by Amarantha Knight (Nancy Kilpatrick).

Originally called Dracula Cha Cha Cha until the American publisher requested a change of title, Judgment of Tears: Anno Dracula 1959 was the third in Kim Newman’s acclaimed vampire series that mixed fact with fiction. Set in Rome on the eve of the wedding of Vlad, Count Dracula, to Moldavian princess Asa Vajda, the vampire elders of the Eternal City were falling victim to a murderer known as the Crimson Executioner.

The undead Saint-Germaine was involved in a plague in 14th century France in Blood Roses by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, and Sisters of the Night: The Angry Angel by the same author was the first in a packaged trilogy about Dracula’s vampire “brides”, illustrated by Christopher H. Bing. Vampyrrhic by Simon Clark concerned bloodsuckers nesting in a village in North Yorkshire, while a group of people inside a ring of standing stones were hurled back in time to a bloody past in the same author’s The Fall.

Of Masques and Martyrs was the third volume in Christopher Golden’s vampire “Shadow Saga”, a computer programmer involved with role-playing games was apparently killed by one of the undead in Linda Grant’s Vampire Bytes, and The Undying by Mudrooroo, a native Australian, was an unusual vampire novel and the second volume in the “Master of the Ghost Dreaming” series.

Blue Moon by Laurell K. Hamilton was the eighth instalment in the author’s horror/crime series featuring vampire-hunter Anita Blake, who had to figure out a way to get her ex-boyfriend, high school teacher and werewolf Richard, out of jail after he was framed for attempted rape in Tennessee. The characters returned in Burnt Offerings , which involved an arsonist destroying businesses owned by the undead and a visit from the vampire’s ruling council.

A Chill in the Blood was the seventh volume in P. N. Elrod’s “The Vampire Files” series about undead private eye Jack Fleming in a post-prohibition Chicago, and The Flesh, the Blood, and the Fire by S. A. Swiniarski (S. Andrew Swann) involved police detective Stefan Ryzard investigating a vampire conspiracy and a series of “torso” murders in Depression-era Cleveland.

A vampire had been hiding for years inside the Titanic in Michael Romkey’s Vampire Hunter, while in Miguel Conner’s The Queen of Darkness vampires ruled a post-holocaust Earth.

One of Britain’s most successful authors, Terry Pratchett was awarded the O.B.E. in the Queen’s Birthday honours list for his services to literature. He also published his twenty-third “Discworld” novel, Carpe Jugulum, which involved the rulers of Uberwald, who just happened to be modern-thinking vampires.

Elvira: The Boy Who Cried Werewolf was the third in the series by the camp TV horror host and John Paragon. Lycanthropic detective Ty Merrick returned in Manjinn Moon, the third volume in Denise Vitola’s mystery series set in the near-future. The Passion was a romantic tale about contemporary werewolves and a family secret by Donna Boyd, while a book of spells created a reluctant werewolf in Sandra Morris’ dark fantasy Green Moon and Wolfsbane.