While we're at Jaume Balagueró I might as well tell you a bit about the novel that inspired his Los sin nombre: It's a story of about 250 yellowed paperback pages by one of the most recognized horror/suspense authors in Britain the last 35 years or so -- Ramsey Campbell.
Written in 1981 The Nameless invites us to join a mother's traumatic search for her kidnapped-and-presumed-to-be-dead daughter: The little girl has special powers but is abducted from the daycare center and later a mutilated body is discovered ... Case closed. Years go by and the mother, Barbara, is sublimating the loss of both her husband and her dear daughter, Angela, through hard work as a successful agent and publisher of books. One day when she answers her phone she hears her daughters voice once again...
What follows is a sinister, though somewhat subtle and vague, cat-and-mouse game where Barbara gradually is convinced that Angela is still alive, and where she's taken to strange places in the search for her daughter: First, there's the other young mother having lost her own child to what she calls a horrible sect involved in corruption and torture -- "The Nameless" (whom herself falls victim to a horribly strange fetal creature); second, there's the lady journalist trying to infiltrate their organization, discovering the abominable truth and is lured into a trap causing her slow and painful demise; and, finally, the calls from Angela to Barbara, where the spider gradually entangle its prey in its web of deceit...
The Nameless is, in my opinion, neither a very good book nor a bad one; it's not Ramsey Campbell's better work, by far, but I have been much more disappointed some other novels of his... Let's just say that he is Ramsey Campbell -- the man who can weave such mental frights by means of strange shadows, lopsided people or creatures, and by exploring the boundaries between reality and the supernatural in such a subtle and sublime way that it can either be a total bore... or a complete success...
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