Beam of Malice

‘Alex Hamilton is a master of the short, dark story.’ – Susan Hill (author of The Woman in Black)


Alex Hamilton’s contributions to the famous Pan Books of Horror Stories series quickly secured his reputation as one of the best and most original writers of macabre tales of his generation. Beam of Malice (1966), his first collection, features many of his finest and most unsettling tales and showcases his unique and unusual imagination. In these stories, Hamilton does not rely on ghosts, the supernatural, or the standard machinery of gothic fiction in order to induce his chills. Instead, his horrors spring from the familiar, with ordinary people finding their lives suddenly and inexplicably invaded by bizarre, disturbing, and sometimes deadly occurrences.


Beam of Malice was acclaimed by critics when originally published, earning comparisons with the short stories of Saki and John Collier, and has been championed more recently by Ramsey Campbell, who writes that Alex Hamilton ‘is one of the absolute masters of the sunlit nightmare, the tale of insidious disquiet and relentless unease. He’s a true original, and it’s past time that he took his place in the pantheon of the elegantly macabre.’ This edition contains fifteen stories, including ‘The Attic Express’, which has been recognized as a classic of the genre, as well as a new introduction by the author.


‘Alex Hamilton is one of the absolute masters of the sunlit nightmare, the tale of insidious disquiet and relentless unease. He's a true original, and it's past time that he took his place in the pantheon of the elegantly macabre.’ – Ramsey Campbell 


‘He turns ordinariness inside out like a glove to show the darkness inside.’ – Robert Nye 


‘Hamilton has a vibrantly wicked imagination comparable to Roald Dahl. . . . The author is a precise stylist, a talented terrorist.’ – Kirkus


‘A Saki-like atmosphere and effect in which the strange is suddenly interjected into the real as if it were really there all the time waiting to be discovered.’ – Choice