MACABRE is a terrifying blend of modern urban paranoia, nightmarish visions, and supernatural dark fantasy, where the contemporary issue of homelessness and missing persons takes on a new and altogether more chilling dimension.

More people die at four in the morning than at any other time.

It's 3.30 am. It's starting to rain. And cabbie Tony Dandridge is cruising the dark streets of the big city. Is it his imagination, or do there seem to be more lost souls wandering the alleys and sleeping rough these days?

Suddenly he catches a figure in his headlights. A desperate young woman and her baby, flagging him down. Tony's about to pick up the first fare of his shift.

And the last.

EVENING TELEGRAPH Great contemporary British horror writes are few and far between - James Herbert, and that's it. Now another has emerged from the shadows. Stephen Laws is hardly a newcomer - Macabre is his sixth novel - but the quality of this modern tale of urban terror reinforces his growing reputation and pushes him into the first division of doom merchants. The book is a terrifying account of street life as seen by those who experience it at the sharp end - the homeless. They are the prey of a religious cult whose leader has struck a deal with the dead to ensure his own eternal life. Bedtime reading it may not be - compelling reading it certainly is.

STEPHEN GALLAGHER At the forefront of his field, Stephen Laws shows us horror's most valuable function - the use of great darkness to point up and define, in spectacular fashion, that which is truly humane

DARK ASYLUM Stephen Laws, the real thing. For me he's the classic horror writer. His work operates as a salutary reminder to the rest of us, rooted as it is in the traditions of the genre: back to basic in the truest sense, it draws its strengths from his deep knowledge of the forerunners who first broke this ground, while remaining totally contemporary and always surging forward. Neat trick if you can do it; and Laws is one of the few who can. (Macabre) ... is harsh, in-your-face horror ... strong meat, as it should be. Kept me awake late reading it, and then awake some more re-living it when I wanted to be sleeping

TIME OUT Stephen Laws provides plenty of wintery chills... keeps the shocks coming thick and fast.