These three stories I think appeared in one of Charles Grant’s Greystone Bay anthologies. I know I’ve read them somewhere before. Greystone Bay is one of those places like Oxrun Station where you never want to live. For solicited tales written under constraints of setting, these three are all top notch. The Red House has a little Ligotti in it without Ligotti’s pessimism. It also has a scent of Bradbury in it as do the other two stories. Doom City is just plain pessimistic. Beauty, the weakest of the three here, is still a nice little haunting.

It would be interesting to see what people would say if a story like The Red House or Doom City was said to have been written by say a Ligotti or Laird Barron, would people find it more profound? Since McCammon presumably doesn’t have some overarching philosophy he’s trying to work out in his writing, is it any less intellectual?

McCammon is one of the few writers that can write long or short and sweet. I don’t think he does much short work anymore since the doorstops bring in the filthy lucre so much better. ( )