I read these two horror novels back to back. Ramsey Campbell is one of my favourite authors and is as obscure as you can get, while Stephen King is probable one of the most well known writers in the world. Thieving Fear is another eerily unsettling excursion into progressively accumulating dread as the four protagonists of the novel are literally infected by their worst nightmares by an un-dead Victorian occultist. Kubrick's The Shining is one of my favourite films, but have never got around to reading the novel it's based upon. I have to say the film is far superior. King is excellent with character background and dialogue and has an easy-to-read style which carries you effortlessly through the story (the true meaning of the overused term 'a great storyteller') but the supernatural horror here is sometimes so over the top and hysterical it loses all believability-for instance the garden topiary that comes to ravaging live (not in the film) I found just ridiculous. And yes it all ends with a very un-subtle explosion.
For a review of Thieving Fear, read Arthur B from Ferrettbrain here.
The Wiki entry for Stephen King's The Shining is here.
