SHELTER by L.H. MAYNARD & M.P.N. SIMS
Leisure paperback, 321pp, £5.99

Property developer Laura Craig buys an outbuilding on the Charteris estate with the intention of renovating it and selling for a handsome profit, only her workmen release an ancient evil, a creature that functions by possessing the bodies of others. Brian Tanner, Laura’s ex-boyfriend and business partner, a man hell-bent on revenge after being dumped as a lover, makes the perfect foil for the inhuman Verani, but Tanner’s hatred of Laura complicates things for the alien entity, whose own agenda involves a vendetta against the descendants of the Charteris family, with one of whom, Richard, Laura is falling in love.

This book is very much a mixed bag. The characters are well drawn, with a depth that makes them seem real despite the obviously ‘unreal’ events in which they find themselves embroiled. The growing attraction between Laura and Richard is handled with skill, giving us a credible picture of how two people can come to care for each other in a short period of time, though in parenthesis I wish Richard’s controlling attitude to Laura had been explored a bit more. The vindictive Tanner is an especial treat, a bad guy we can love to hate and an intriguing counterweight to the Verani, whose actions seem far more explicable by comparison. On the downside, while the opening scenes set in Africa are a brilliant and intriguing curtain raiser, plotwise the rest of the story doesn’t quite live up to them. All the elements are a little too familiar, from the borderline psycho boyfriend to the hint of more to come at the end, from the degenerate family member locked away to die to the almost leprous growth that infects some of the cast, the building blocks of a house through which flit the restless spirits of Arthur Jermyn and Wilbur Whateley.

Maynard and Sims are skilled writers and know their stuff. They have fun with these tropes and hold the reader’s attention all the way, with plenty of tension and the odd gruesome set piece, but there are things that don’t quite add up, such as why the Charteris family, who don’t seem short of a bob or two, sold the house in the first place, and their ambivalent attitude to killing the Verani. Taken as a whole the story doesn’t really contribute anything much original to a tried and tested formula, that of the family curse.

I’ve long admired these writers and their success in moving out of the small press and into the mass market with Leisure is well deserved. All misgivings aside, Shelter is a well written and never less than entertaining book by any supernatural horror lover’s standards; it’s just that, after the innovation of recent work like The Hidden Language of Demons, this seems to be a backward step for Maynard and Sims, a return to an older and now outgrown template, one with which they are perhaps a little too comfortable for their own good.

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