The Long Lost

David and Joelle's long-lost relative, Gwendolen, helps them recover from a family tragedy, but soon they are caught in a web of evil and dark secrets seemingly spun from Gwendolen's white hair. By the author of Midnight Sun.

From Publishers Weekly

Campbell may be the most protean of horror writers, adept at quiet terror in the classic tradition (Midnight Sun), eccentric horror that plays for laughs (The Count of Eleven) or, as in this tightly wrought work, fiction that uses the genre as a staging ground for deft psychological and sociological commentary. The occult element here is almost incidental to the mayhem unleased in the English town of Chester after home renovators David and Joelle Owain discover a withered old woman barely alive outside a remote Welsh village and take her home with them. Soon, the lives of the Owains and their friends and neighbors take a precipitous turn toward madness: train engineer Herb Cantry, enraged at his wife's leaving him for another man, crashes his train and kills both himself and his rival; computer consultant Richard Vale, his business in tatters, poisons his entire family; David Owain falls out with a close friend and falls in lust with a sexy teenager. Meanwhile, the old woman grows ever more vigorous. At novel's end, in a revelation that feels arbitrary and even unnecessary, Campbell lets on why, but the reason hardly matters because his main aim here seems not to be the delineation of supernatural agents and horror but the tracing of what happens when conscience gives way to license. At this he succeeds admirably, though with its minimum of occult bells and whistles this novel is more suited for a mainstream audience than the vociferous horror readership the author has courted for so long. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

On vacation in Wales, David and Joelle Owain discover Gwen, an old woman asleep in a small cottage on a deserted island created by the tides. Amazingly, she claims to be a distant relative and returns with the Owains to Chester. After a backyard barbecue, where Gwen meets the family's friends and neighbors, misfortunes begin to dog the guests, causing David to wonder just who and what Gwen really is. Events build to a suspenseful, surprising, and satisfying climax in the hands of the prolific Campbell (The Count of Eleven, LJ 6/1/92), a master of the sinister. He sustains an atmosphere of dread by detailing the daily horrors that can collectively destroy one's life. Disturbing and original, this neat mix of contemporary fiction with supernatural undertones is recommended for most collections.Eric W. Johnson, Teikyo Post Univ. Lib., Waterbury, Conn.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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