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A rather old-fashioned horror tale, in the way that James' The Turn of the Screw might be compared to more contemporary authors of the genre, such as Mark Danielewski, Clive Barker, Dan Simmons, or even Stephen King, The Darkest Part of the Woods is as much about atmosphere and psychological insights into the author's characters as it is about the buildup of tension or horrific drama, which in the final analysis remains rather understated. The author is in no hurry to reveal what is lurking within his woods, nor is he unwilling to digress a bit from his central plotline to explore the human environs of the British village of Goodmanswood and the neighboring town of Brichester. Between seemingly strange and haunting events, everyday life continues: people go to work, attend art exhibits, send their children to ballet classes at the local community centre, and worry about the future of sons who seem unable to decide upon a vocation. Meanwhile, across the Commons and a recently added Bypass, the nearby wood, less than a square mile in acreage, seemingly broods and extends an influence well in excess of its actual limits.

Focused upon one family, the Price's are no more dysfunctional than usual. Heather is a librarian at the local university, a vocation that appears as much serendipitous as arrived at for any other reason. Divorced, she lives with her son, Sam, a young man recently graduated from college who works part-time at a failing bookstore, and who, until that moment, has shown no concerted interest in anything beyond a spell of tree-sitting to protest the cutting down of a portion of the wood to make way for a new freeway bypass. Both have grown up in Goodmanswood; still live in the house where they spent their respective childhoods. Heather's mother, a successful artist soon to undergo a creative crisis, has moved nearby into an apartment in order to make room for her daughter and grandson. While she has experienced some success in her career, it is nothing compared to the notoriety of her husband, Heather's father, whose antics have landed him in The Arbour, a local, private hospital for the insane, where he can often be seen night or day staring from his window into the woods across the motorway. The family is also soon to be rejoined by Heather's younger sister, Sylvia, a published academic who has wandered the world in study of folklore associated with woodlands and sylvan fauna, and who has unexpectedly returned to bear a child amidst family support. But this dysfunctional if ordinary bliss is about to be disturbed by events stemming from their father's illness.

Before his "breakdown," Lennox Price was a respected academic, an authority on mass hallucination and the psychology of popular delusion. Brought to Brichester years ago to investigate an outbreak of dementia associated with Goodmanswood, he comes to believe it is caused by a lichen with hallucinatory properties that grows on the trees in the middle of the wood, around the old ruins of a 16th century tower. Upon this discovery, the trees are cut down, and the incidence of communal madness ceases. However, Lennox Price himself falls prey to the strange mental malady, apparently from his investigation and contact with the area. Along with its other victims, he has been an inmate of The Arbour ever since. Of late, with some of his fellow patients, he has taken to slipping the hospital grounds in order to revisit the woods.

It is a forest with a long history, stemming back before the Roman invasion. Once harboring a Neolithic stone circle, similar to others of the region such as Stonehenge, when razed by the Romans it was discovered to have been the site of even earlier rituals. By the seventh century, a nearby settlement became established, named after its neighboring wood, and associated with the various legends surrounding the Godmund, or Good Man, by some accounts a mythical guide for anyone lost in the forest, by others a devil's ground. Rumors of its being haunted date back to the thirteenth century, when travelers were commonly referred to avoid its precincts. Afterward, during the late 16th century, the site was appropriated by one of the early advocates of the occult, Nathaniel Selcouth, who built a tower upon the ruins of the old stone circle, ringed by a wall of brick. Rumors of his strange activities eventually led to his arrest and execution for witchcraft, with his tower being burned to the ground and buried beneath a mound of earth. Over time, all the stories associated with Goodmanswood became part of the area's folklore, a bit of local color to tell the tourists -- that is until just recently. Now strange sightings are once again being reported abroad at night, local residents are imagining that the forest stirs, and the Price family appears to be at the center of every odd occurrence.

Drawing from various traditions and tropes, the basic premise and setting of this novel should be familiar to any long-time reader of the genre, ranging from the earliest associations of woodlands with the folklore of witchcraft and faerie, to more recent conjurings of fiction and film, from H.P. Lovecraft and RObert Holdstock's Mythago sans mythology, to Disney's The Watcher in the Woods or the over-hyped Blair Witch Project, touching upon primordial fears that in certain respects today seem ironic. In its animism (or animus) most closely resembling the tone and unease of Lovecraft, Ramsey Campbell is nonetheless able to reinvest his source material with enough fresh perspective and eclectic borrowing to avoid becoming entirely derivative, and he wisely skirts his horror's full identity, instead leaving it more as a suggestion, a glimpse of something lurking behind the leaves and serried trees, its presence perceived, yet remaining just out of view.

If there is a complaint that can be leveled at The Darkest Part of the Woods, it would be at its repeated use of description to convey the wood's anima, a return to details of the wood's appearance that are quite visual, yet, at least early on in the book, subtle in their alteration, nuances that perhaps would work better in their brief lens-like shiftings of perspective for film than their broad similarity as text. Also, as intimated earlier, this is a work which develops its evolving mysteries and apprehension slowly: fear is often apperceived and horror more sensed than actually experienced. This is not a novel that startles or is essentially dramatically driven, though suspense builds, particularly during the second half of the novel. It is more a story typified by dread than fright, and an accumulating disquiet. As the wood watches, so do you, and in this respect -- a mirroring of dark observance -- the book is entirely successful. But expect its rewards to be spectral rather than creating any tangible terror.