Darkness Demands

Read Darkness Demands Storyline:

   John Newton is a successful writer of true-life
crime stories, specializing in unsolved murders from the past. He has a happy
family life with his schoolteacher wife and two children. And he has a nice new
home in the rural countryside. Life is good for John Newton.
   Until the letters start arriving…
   Dark, mysterious letters. Deadly letters with
demands.
   And then everything changes…
   Until John Newton is faced with a seemingly
insurmountable dilemma: he can choose between the survival of his daughter… or
the rest of his family - not both.
   With this, his eighth nerve-shattering novel of
supernatural suspense, Simon Clark triumphantly confirms his reputation as "one
of the most exciting British horror writers around."
    
***
    
   From Publishers Weekly
   A classic horror theme the unnatural survival in the
present of an indescribably nasty bit of the past gets a routine treatment in
this latest novel from British author Clark (The Judas Tree). Bestselling
true crime writer John Newton has recently moved with his wife, teenage son Paul
and young daughter Elizabeth to a stately house in Skelbrooke when he begins
receiving anonymous notes, couched in archaic language, demanding offerings of
inconsequential items mostly food and drink to be left on a grave in the
Necropolis on the outskirts of town. Though John is merely puzzled, his
neighbors, who receive the same notes, are horrified. Since Norman days,
Skelbrooke has been periodically terrorized by a primitive entity dubbed "Baby
Bones," and those who fail to satisfy its wishes meet with ghastly fates. Even
readers not well versed in horror fiction will intuit what John will inevitably
be asked to leave in the graveyard the moment Baby Bones's suggestive name is
invoked. Clark sustains suspense as best he can, with a panoramic narrative that
shows the tragic impact of the entity's demands on other lives, but several of
the subplots Paul's romantic liaisons in the Necropolis and a senile town
elder's repeated attempts to pass John important information on the town's
history seem obvious padding. Though Clark credibly portrays John's gradual
transformation from incredulous observer to desperate believer, his fans may
find the eerie climax of this tale uncharacteristically contrived rather than
earned.
    
***
    
   "The hottest new purveyor of horrific thrills currently
working on these shores."
   -Big Issue
    
   "What gives Clark his lever into your own fears is taking
the mundane and making it menacing."
   -SFX