The Ghost Quartet is a compilation of four original stories by known authors all writing with ghosts in mind. These four stories are all vastly different and each enjoyable in their own way. Though not all will give you those frightful shivers on a dark night, they are all very well written and entertaining for the stories they are.
The first story is by Brian Lumley, titled The Place of Waiting. This is a story of a painter, Paul Stanard, who in an attempt to paint a portion of the moors, sees more than he should. A painter, or any artist, sees things differently. Possibly with a clearer eye, or perhaps just with an eye for seeing things as they are, as they could be and as they could have been. But this is not just a story of a ghost encounter. It is the story of what can happen when our personal ‘ghosts’ can haunt us as much as those spiritual ones we may see or feel in certain places.
The second story, Orson Scott Card’s Hamlet’s Father, was my personal favorite. Card takes the famous tragedy and spins it out into something even twistier than the original. As with the original, nearly all of the main characters end up dead by the final lines. However, the motives and reasoning in this retelling are both clearer and more disturbing.
The Haunted Single Malt, written by the book’s editor, begins as a deliciously benign tale of the sharing of ghost stories amongst a core group of friends and whoever might happen along and be interested. Things change when an old tragedy resurfaces. While scotch drinkers will certainly enjoy the more technical portions of the tale, the true center of this story is the origins and consequences of guilt.
The final story, Tanith Lee’s Strindberg’s Ghost Sonata reads like a fable – a cautionary tale of greed and selfishness. The ghost in this story more of an imprisoned restless soul, there is no true ‘haunting’ though the tale itself and the human character thus revealed is haunting.
Being an anthology, it is difficult to sum up four different stories by four different artists. Each story has its own merit and each was very readable, a testament to a grouping of accomplished writers. I would suggest this for fans of each author – to discover more of their work – and also for those who enjoy the short fiction style. For die hard horror fans this may be a bit of a disappointment as these are not designed to force the reader to turn on a night light before bed. However, some horror fans might find each of these stories a delicious little appetizer in between full length novels.
