Dudley Smith works in the unemployment office but in his spare time he writes stories – murder stories set in Liverpool. All of his tales relate to the experiences of Mr Killogram, a serial killer who takes pleasure in murdering women in a variety of ways but still managing to make the deaths look accidental.

When his mother decides to send one of his stories in to a competition being run by a new magazine, Mersey Mouth, she never imagined it would win – but it did! If that were not enough Dudley is then approached by a company wanting to make a film of his stories it seems that he has finally made the big time.

As the team at Mersey Mouth start to advertise Dudley's story they are approached by a woman claiming that the story is not fiction and it is actually based on the death of her daughter a few years earlier. Although Dudley claims to be unaware of the incident surely this is more than coincidence?

Secret Stories is the latest story by Ramsey Cambell to be published by PS Publishing and follows the life of Dudley Smith as he strives to become a best selling author. What we the readers are told, and the other characters are unaware of, is that Dudley has a very disturbing way of getting inspiration for his writing. He doesn't just copy real-life murder stories he actually goes out and commits them himself!

It is testament to the writing skill that I found Dudley a particularly distasteful character. Not just because he is a serial killer but his very nature gave me the creeps. But when you discover that his mother, after his father left home, has given Dudley everything he wants and has pandered to his every whim there is no surprise he has turned out a little strange.

I have ready a lot of Ramsey Campbell's short stories over the last couple of years but I have to admit that whilst he is a good short story writer, I definitely prefer his longer fiction. It gives him the chance to really get his teeth into a character and give the story a depth that just isn't possible in a shorter format.

I have often said that I think that PS Publishing have an excellent eye for stories and publish books of the very highest quality. Once again they have maintained their high standard. An excellent addition to their portfolio.

Synopsis
It was so dark that she had to wonder if she was able to see at all. Her blood was throbbing in time with the waves of pain in her jaw, and the way its dull sound was crushed into her head made it apparent that her ears had suffered some damage too. She tried to reach for her jaw to learn how badly it was injured, only to discover that she had no hands. She might have cried out except for her lack of a mouth.

He'd removed it along with her eyes and ears. Her entire body was seized by a convulsion that felt like an attempt to give shape to a scream. Her knees thumped a cold slippery unyielding surface as her spine pressed against the opposite wall of the receptacle in which she was stored. She struggled to stretch out, but the top of her head bumped another wall, and whatever was left at the end of her legs - less than feet, its absence of sensation implied - collided with a fourth.

Dudley Smith writes stories, but he has reasons why he wants nobody to know.

His mother Kathy knows he writes and wants the world to read his work.

Can Patricia, the journalist who interviews him, learn his secret before she becomes part of his research?

Secret Stories is a black comedy of creativity gone wrong, a contemporary Liverpool crime novel, a study of one of today's typical sociopaths. Ramsey Campbell has already written about killers before - in The Face That Must Die and The Count of Eleven and elsewhere - but never more memorably than this. You might know this one. You might work with him.