"It's him, Mummy. He's here! Don't let him in … I don't want to go …" - Bronwyn

Penny Crescent is the typical street basking in the sunlight of a sub division that has become established over the last few years. But dark secrets can be hidden behind suburban doors. Frank Harper regular beats his wife Annie and terrorises his young children. Jenny Dean can no longer control her two sons who are into drugs and petty crime. And Eleanor McQuire is under pressure from her grandson to move with him to London and forego her mystic books and attempts to understand the afterlife.

When paranormal activity starts to threatened the cloistered lives of three families, no one is prepared for what the hauntings are harbingers of. The Collector walks out of the darkest depths with monsters at his command, he wants something from the three families, and is prepared to open the gates of hell to get it! Can our suburbanites survive a night of dark terror or will they crack in the face of an ancient evil.

Russell pulls off one of the best tricks in modern horror, taking multiple points of view, running with them, and then tying them together in a single dialogue. Authors as divergent as Stephen King, Richard Laymon, and James Herbert, have in the past used the same perspective to get complex character driven narratives working for them. When it works you get a rich tapestry of viewpoints, when it doesn't you are left with a mad woman's breakfast as Readers are left wondering just why some viewpoints were included, and exactly why some developments needed a strong character build to have them happening. The one thing you have to get right however is in having distinct characters, how many books have you read where characters became indecipherable and pretty much interchangeable? So a bit of a knife edge going down, thankfully Russell gets it working for the reader and nails the requirements without getting lost in the details.

Where Russell really has The Collector working is in his characters, who not only show some human flaws but who will also rise or sink as the situation worsens. For sure the titular character is pure evil, tainted with perhaps having a job to do that he may or may not entirely like, but just how evil can a character who appreciates a good spot of tea and biscuits really be? Without giving too much away in the spoilers stakes, some of the characters will surprise with their reactions to the situation while other characters have their character flaws exposed like that time you lost your togs at the beach. Or was that just me?

Yes I know you have been waiting on the good stuff, and here there by monsters friends and neighbours. Russell isn't stinting on the carnival freak show on offer here. First up we get the "prowlers", a sort of arachnid insect with a single large eye. They swarm like piranha in one of those Hollywood movies and can no doubt strip a cow of flesh in a couple of minutes. Since they are black and sort of click about the place, I would be keeping the Raid on hand. There's also a brief confrontation with a mechanoid that is pretty fluid, the Dean Brothers face their Waterloo right there. And I just have to say the cream in this particular coffee is Montgomery, I'll leave it to the Reader to discover the joys involved there. Excellent piece of imaginative writing with this nightmarish creation that is perpetually hungry.

In terms of structure we have a brief interlude where we learn the basics of each character, followed by some paranormal activity, with the vast majority of the novel centring on our Surbanites squaring off against the Collector and his menagerie of horrors. It sort of reminds of something Ray Bradbury might have concocted if he was feeling particularly gruesome on the day. The only problem with the structure I had was the paranormal activity sort of got thrown into the mix, it's crucial to the plot, and then gets left behind except for a brief couple of cameos. I would have liked to have seen another hundred pages or so of supernatural hauntings with maybe a slight malevolence thrown in for good measure.

But moving right along, the Collector himself could well become a horror icon if anyone decides the novel needs a movie adaptation. I was thinking the Tall Man from thosePhantasm movies that were kicking around in the 1980s. With at least one more book in the series to come, fingers crossed for two or more, at least Downunder we have a new protagonist to liven up our nightmares. The Collector is a novel that if handled right should appeal to the masses overseas as well so we might just be lucky enough to be at ground zero in a new horror franchise.

Guess I don't need to mention that the book is well written, we've covered Daniel I. Russell's prose in a previous review. For those not keeping up, he writes very much in the English style, so you can expect well-constructed prose that is easy to read, sort of like James Herbert when that Writer hits his zone.

Guess the final word on this novel is the halt in hostilities as the book hits page final. Like any good first book in a series, The Collector Book One: Mana Leak rounds out the current story arc while setting up the situation for the next book. There are at least three characters who are clearly going to return in the next novel, and no doubt the Police will remain baffled about the apparent carnage going down. Russell covers the authorities, one of the aspects that gets sadly missed in a lot of horror. I'm already looking forward to the second book as it's been set up nicely by events in Mana Leak, one wonders just what might wait beyond the portal. Slight teaser there kids, sorry you'll need to read this book to find out what that's all about.

So The Collector arrived on my desk pretty much unannounced, might have missed the memo of course, but proved to be well worth dialling into. I rocked along to the plot as it unfolded, the characters that while having some flaws by and largely manned up when confronted with supernatural danger, and of course the selection of protagonists tossed at Penny Crescent. The pace was lively, there's no lag involved here as things go from the merely chaotic to the utter rampaging as the attacks liven up. And the structure that went from the standard horror trope of survivors holed up in a house to those survivors going on the offensive. I've got no problems recommending this one, all the cool kids are going to be reading this series, so get in early and grab a copy. Wonder if we'll get those action figures when the movie gets made?

If after a copy of The Collector you're first point of call is Dark Continents, though amazon.com and the usual suspects will no doubt have your book covered. The list price is $18.99, which given the current price of books in Oz presents as great value for money. Daniel I. Russell maintains a blog right about here, so dial in there to keep up to date with the Author.

[Editor's Note: A few people have been asking about updates to our links section, currently on hold while we await our new software that will style that section. No we don't list facebook pages, sorry fundamental issues with that scourge of the modern world. The Borg are out there in cyberland folks].