Book Review: "The Platform Edge" ed. by Mike Ashley

Full Title: The Platform Edge: Uncanny Tales of the Railways edited by Mike Ashley

When I was at university, I used to take the trains all the time. It is one of my main forms of transport and it has been a constant worry in my mind that perhaps one day, I will meet with the wrong person on the train. If I am going to see my brother, I use the train. If I am going to the city, or to London, or to Bath or anywhere else I have been around the country - I will use the train. In this anthology edited by Mike Ashley though, we get to see the outcomes to all those questions we ask about taking the train at the wrong time or seeing the wrong thing on the lines. From stories by a large range of writers, including E.F Benson and Huan Mee - these are not just stories about taking the trains, these are stories about the weird things that we could encounter when we do.

There were definitely a few stories which stood out to me in this compilation of 'uncanny tales' of the railways. One of them was called The Conductor's Story by Zoe Dana Underhill. This about a man who meets a conductor who tells the story of a possible murderer named Larry who worked the lines and kept his job after supposedly killing his own mother. He only kept his job though because, as she was dying his mother absolved him of all responsibility for her death in front of other people. Larry becomes haunted, hounded and more in this horrific tale of madness on the railway line and of course, bad things are going to happen to bad people.

The next story that stood out to me was called The Tragedy in the Train by Huan Mee. This is less of simply a horror story but it is a horror story mixed with classic crime (so, as you can imagine, that is even better for me). The narrative is about a man who is one half a set of partners in business together. He is found alone and dead in a train carriage with a bullet in his head - apparently, nobody had been in or out of the carriage and so the death is immediately thought to be a suicide. That's until we notice that there is no gun found on or near the body. As weirdness unfolds, a camera plays a crucial role in not catching the murderer, but in probably letting him get away with it. It's a really atmospheric and twisted story and I highly recommend it to fans of the British Library Crime Classics series.

The next story I enjoyed though it is a very short one was called The Underground People by Rosemary Timperley. This was purely because of how different the story was from all the others in the anthology. First of all, the story is written in 1st and 2nd person which is terrifyingly difficult to achieve. Secondly, this story really does give of a foreboding air and that makes the narrator seem very frightening indeed. Thirdly, this story I can imagine, would be really effective if read aloud. It is about a set of people that the narrator calls 'The Underground People'. These are apparently groups of people who look lik the undead and live on the London Underground casually getting in the way of the more living and overground people. However, the narrator then goes through how one might become an 'Underground Person' and how one might not even realise it is happening. That is where it starts to get really frightening.

All in all, I thought this anthology was tons of fun. It has everything: crime, romance, horror, atmospheres of darkness and weirdness, things that are strange and finally, the absolutely mystifying. It really does take a simple transport like the train and turn it into a place of myth, a place of terror and a place to truly be afraid of. It has a horrifying air and makes us question whether we really need to take that last train just after midnight in London.