Fowler, Christopher "Hell Train"

Fowler, Christopher "Hell Train" - 2011

"Hell Train", a ghost story. Not my usual genre. But a friend asked me to read the German translation and see how it flows.

Well, it flows very well. The story is interesting, even though I wouldn't normally pick one of these. The characters, four people who happen to meet in a train, are well described, each and every one of them comes alive well. The story moves back and forth from real life into the film that is supposedly under construction. Maybe that made the whole story more believable to me even though I think most people who love horror stories could have lived without it. I did like the folk tales people were telling each other about the train, stories they had heard as children and lived with all their lives.

I haven't read the original but I would think that anyone who likes to read these kind of stories will love it.

From the back cover:

"Four passengers meet on a train journey through Eastern Europe during the First World War, and face a mystery that must be solved if they are to survive... Bizarre creatures, satanic rites, terrified passengers and the romance of travelling by train, all feature in this classically styled horror novel. As the ‘Arkangel’ races through the war-torn countryside, the passengers must find out: What is in the casket that everyone is so afraid of? What is the tragic secret of the veiled Red Countess who travels with them? Why is their fellow passenger the army brigadier so feared by his own men? And what exactly is the devilish secret of the 'Arkangel' itself?

 Imagine there was a supernatural chiller that Hammer Films never made. A grand epic produced at the studio’s peak, which played like a cross between the Dracula and Frankenstein films and Dr Terror’s House Of Horrors..."