The Overnight (2004) by Ramsey Campbell: Earth's greatest horror writer takes us into the first English franchise in the Texts big-box bookstore chain. There's friction between the go-get-'em American manager sent to show the English how it's done and the staff, many of whom have issues of their own with one another.
Located between Liverpool and Manchester, Texts and the surrounding strip mall have been constructed on long-unused ground in a place known as Fenny Meadows. Seemingly peaceful grassland while the mall was built, Fenny Meadows has started generating the pervasive fog and rising damp that it's infamous for. These are harbingers of what's to come.
The Overnight pleasingly combines satire with ancient horror and work-place dramedy. Campbell deftly weaves just enough exposition into the narrative to satisfy one's questions about just what is happening, all without having to drop a Basil Exposition-style figure into things. Indeed, the novel brings in what seems to be an Exposition Mouthpiece but then has him refuse to divulge more than a few snippets to one of the characters.
Instead, the most useful exposition both for the reader and for the characters comes from the fact that the Thing plaguing Fenny Meadows apparently enjoys taping over pre-recorded videocassettes. Or something does, perhaps as a warning.
Campbell divvies up The Overnight into third-person-limited chapters focused on one character. This ties into the novel's concerns with human empathy and social ties as the essence of civilization (indeed, being 'civil') -- the Thing of Fenny Meadows seeks to divide to conquer. What wakes in Fenny Meadows is the opposite of civility and fellow feeling -- and the opposite of language itself as represented in all those doomed texts, and Texts. Winner of Best Novel of 2004 from the International Horror Guild. Highly recommended.
