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Hotel Midnight
Simon Clark
Robert Hale, hardback, 221 pages, £18.99
ISBN 0-7090-7819-6
Review by Steven Blake (2005)

Simon Clark’s second collection of short stories if we include his first, back in 1990, which was from a small press before he’d achieved recognised publication. That collection, Blood and Grit, is scarce now. So it’s good news that some of Hotel Midnight’s stories are reprinted from magazines and limited edition anthologies. These can be expensive, even when you can find them at all. Two stories are brand new, and another has been revised.

This collection includes eleven stories from the last nine years (Salt Snake, his previous, boasted 25, but two of this set are novella-length), and an introduction. They’re all pretty good, there’s some rather nightmarish ‛horror of the ordinary’ in this book, and the stories range all over the place; one of them takes a trip to an alternative London you don’t want to wander into (‛Goblin City Lights’). There’s a crime story (reprinted from Crime Time, a magazine you should check out), and some nastiness involving a forest suddenly appearing outside the back door. 

The finale is particularly worthy of mention: ‛The Electra Suite’ – a set in itself, of two stories and a novella – sequels to 1998’s Vampyrrhic and 2003’s Vampyrrhic Rites. These provide the title of this collection, as ‛Hotel Midnight’ is Electra Charnwood’s website from the latter novel. ‛Jack of Bones’, the novella, is one of the best stories in a while).

One complaint: I know that short story collections don’t sell as well as novels. But Clark has written many more stories than he’s had collected, and it’s near-impossible to keep up with them all. If this book sells at all well, let’s see some more, please.

Full contents

On Wings That So Darkly Beat
The Burning Doorway (revised for this collection)
The House That Fell Backwards (a novella)
Demon Me
The Whitby Experience
Goblin City Lights 
Two Dead Detectives 
The Hand of Glory
The Electra Suite: Vamphyrric Outcast, Wall Eye, and Jack of Bones (another novella)