The novel “The Face That Must Die” by Ramsey Campbell was published for the first time in 1979.
Some brutal murders are shocking Liverpool. Horridge knows that one of his neighbors is the culprit and decides it’s his duty to call the police to have him arrested. From his window, he sees the police arrive but after a little while they leave on their own and Horridge fears that they’re his neighbor’s accomplices.
For Horridge the situation is unsustainable. He decides to keep tabs on his neighbor and makes anonymous phone calls to let him know that he can’t get away with it and when a girl who lives in the same apartment complex busts him he pretends he’s a private detective. However, the moment comes when Horridge decides to take action.
Ramsey Campbell was already a known writer when he wrote “The Face That Must Die” and yet at the end of the ’70s was it considered too bleak by various publishers. The author wrote horror stories that generally contained supernatural elements, however this was a psychological thriller with a very realistic setting.
Eventually, Star Books published it in a cut paperback edition. In 1983, the novel was reissued in a complete edition. Today chronicles offer us stories with such details that some fiction stories can’t shock us anymore. The media try to shock their audience while telling news so reading certain novels can’t the effects it had in the late ’70s anymore.
“The Face That Must Die” is basically the story of Horridge, a man who lives in Liverpool’s suburbs and thinks he knows who committed some murders. Ramsey Campbell had difficult family experiences and used them as a source of inspiration to write this novel. In particular, his mother’s psychological state was the basis to develop the character of Horridge. In short, this was a job but also a form of psychotherapy.
When Horridge calls the police to report that his neighbor is a murder, he expects to see him arrested. When that doesn’t happen, he might panic. He wonders what’s going on and if the police are his neighbor’s accomplices. Horridge’s progressive paranoia gives Ramsey Campbell a way to develop his psychological side. Throughout the novel, the author provides a range of information on the protagonist’s history that allows the reader to understand his life and his mental state.
Since the beginning of the novel, it’s clear that Horridge can’t stand immigrants and Jews but particularly homosexuals, who seem to especially obsess him. From this point of view, it could be a story written today because certain types of intolerance seem to remain the same over time.
Some parts of “The Face That Must Die” follow other characters who are involved in various ways in Horridge’s story. This allows Ramsey Campbell to give them some development as well although at times there’s the risk that it becomes a distraction from the main plot.
Due to its characteristics, in “The Face That Must Die” the pace is generally slow with some moments of intense and brutal action in the midst of long pieces of psychological digging. In the end, the horror component of this novel is more in the fact that the reader is disturbed by the killer’s state of mind that by the brutal murders.
Horridge is by far the most developed character in the novel. Some other characters have a certain development that is realistic but for their characteristics I found none who could be called truly likeable. It’s also difficult to feel sorry for the killers victims, even though they actually did nothing wrong.
Over time, “The Face That Must Die” has become one of the best known novels by Ramsey Campbell. Although today it’s not as shocking as at the time of its publication, if you like psychological horror I recommend reading it.
