......... ......... ....

For twenty years, they had been unable to face the truth.
Until the truth was forced upon them.
==========================================

Craig Spector is a peerless observer, a fearless satirist. Reading back his first, marvellous debut, we find an ingeniously twisted plotting, characters both familiar and menacing, and we learn that our reality isn't simple a set of squares and rectangles in different shiny colors: some shadow figures hide in the spaces between nowhere and nothing - and BEYOND THE MIRROR.

They called themselves the "Underground". Seven friends, born in the year of Martin Luther King's protest march against racial harassment, in the same year of Malcom X's assassination.
Now they live separate lives. Caroline Tobb, married Connolly, seems to have forgotten what happened two decades ago inside Custis Manor. She has a job she enjoys, and two dears to think of: Zoe, her daughter, and Kevin, her husband. But on the other side of the mirror something is watching. A voracious force. The spirit of a one-human. A RACIST.
One day Caroline gets a call from her old boyfriend Joshua Custis and the past comes back with a rush: the old days of the "Underground", their bad adventure in the manor house... everything is here again.
Caroline is told that she's quite the only person of the group who lives a normal life. Josh is under psychiatric care, Simon has been murdered by Justin, Amy has been put on a psychiatric ward, Seth is completely broken... "It's time," says Josh Custis, and so they meet again. In the Church of the Open Door.
Their mission is clear. Silas Custis, Josh's ancestor, the king of racists, must be beaten down! All seven of them enter the manor, where ghostly riders whirl at the wind. It's the place in which Justin Van Slyke used the magick to cross over. Twenty years ago. But they tried to stop him, and something went wrong.

Spector presents to us a story which is modern and archaic in the same time. He remembers us that the portraits of dead forefathers are looking down at us. We must be accustomed to evil influences behind the wall of our computer screens.

Spector wrote "Underground" a couple of years ago and since then he hasn't disappointed his fans. He certainly represents a necessary addiction to the horror landscape.
In his following novel "To Bury The Dead" he remains in perfect command - not a word, a wisecrack, a headstone is out of place!
These first two solo works were followed by a series of acclaimed fiction works written together with John Skipp. Here the titles:

- The Light At The End (German: "Das Licht im Abgrund" - Italian: "In fondo al tunnel")
- The Cleanup (German: "Das grosse Saubermachen")
- The Scream
- Dead Lines
- The Bridge
- The Animals
(all available at Amazon's).

Peter Patti, 2005-06