Hell Train by Christopher Fowler
Christopher Folwer , Historical , Horror , Solaris / January 3, 2012

Imagine there was a supernatural chiller that Hammer Films never made. A grand epic produced at the studio’s peak, which played like a cross between the Dracula and Frankenstein films and Dr Terror’s House of Horrors… Four passengers meet on a train journey through Eastern Europe during the First World War, and face a mystery that must be solved if they are to survive. As the Arkangel races through war-torn country side, they must find out: What is in the casket that everyone is so afraid of? What is the tragic secret of the veiled Red Countess who travels with them? Why is their fellow passenger the army brigadier so feared by his own men? And what exactly is the devilish secret of the Arkangel itself? Back in 1989 I was an impressionable fifteen year old and I had just started to develop a passion for reading and a never-ending love for cinema. One of the first books I read, through what I thought at the time were adult eyes, was Roofworld by Christopher Fowler. Meanwhile my introduction to horror cinema, via a wonderful horror obsessed grandmother, was the works of Hammer. Little did I realise some twenty-three years later…