Secret Story by Ramsey Campbell

Published by Tor Books, 400 pages, May, 2006

Hardcover

ISBN: 0765316161

We always knew horror writers were sickos, right? Perhaps Ramsey Campbell is taking a jab at those who hold such stereotypes with his latest novel. In it, aspiring horror writer Dudley Smith is unable to come up with stories on paper. He has to act them out first. Dudley is actually a sociopathic killer who stalks and murders young women, then writes up the real events as horror fiction. His undoing begins with his mother – and doesn't it always? – who believes in her son's talent enough to submit one of his stories to a new Liverpool literary magazine, the Mersey Mouth.

When word of Dudley 's forthcoming publication gets out, the family of a girl suspiciously like the one murdered in his tale start to threaten a lawsuit. So the magazine asks Dudley for some changes. And Dudley obliges in the only way he knows how: with real murders. The novel deftly explores the tensions that are to be found between fame and infamy, art and commerce, fact and fiction. Dudley finds almost immediate recrimination in his civil service job where any celebrity or ambition is seen as an affront to the system. The editors of the Mersey Mouth seem to be willing to trade on Dudley 's new found notoriety for magazine sales, turning a blind eye to concerns about the violence of his work. Even within his own family, Dudley finds himself a pawn in a years old dispute between his long-divorced parents who want to claim his talent as their own.

This does not mean that Dudley gains the readers' sympathy as a victim of his upbringing or of society. Campbell chronicles in detail all of Dudley 's thoughts, making clear that he is a petty, repulsive man. Dudley has an enormous ego and is convinced without question of his own talent and importance. So every slight or criticism received from others is met with inner fury. He cannot conceive of himself as ever being in the wrong. In this, he is a classic sociopath because he does not value the lives or feelings of others, only his own needs. Dudley will take a life without remorse over an insult or in order to get a good story. But only if he is certain he can get away with it since he has a very strong sense of self-preservation. Afterwards he will congratulate himself on his work and gloat over how much his victim had it coming. His murders are not driven by unquenchable hunger violence but by a conviction of his own superiority.

For Campbell this seems to be only a difference of degree and not kind from the behavior of many others in English society. There are many victims in the novel and many characters that prey on those around them. What they share in common is an unshakeable sense of superiority, refusal to question oneself or one's motives. It is not just Dudley who has a secret story but all those with hidden agendas who use those around them for their own gain.

by Nemo Swift
reprinted from BOFFM #3